Trump 2.0 April 27 2025-

Trump’s United States of Emergency

Trump Talks Big on Global Diplomacy, but His Goals Are in Tatters
The president said he would bring a quick end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and get China to bend on trade and Iran on its nuclear program. Instead, conflict is escalating. -13 June 2025

3 August
Trump’s Spectacle Presidency and the Politics of Attention
Daniel Béland
(Policy) Trump’s use of the world’s most reliable coverage-magnet bully pulpit as a propaganda tool is not simply the product of personality. In fact, what media scholar Nolan Higdon calls the “spectacle presidency” is largely about controlling the political agenda to emphasize certain issues and obscure others, when diversion is politically expedient.
For instance, as the debate over the possible release of the Jeffrey Epstein files continues, the president seeks to shift media and public attention elsewhere, from ever-changing tariff deadlines to grossly false accusations about people his base loves to hate such as Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.
But the stakes of this spectacle are much higher than personal score settling, reflecting the deepening crisis of US democracy and the rise of American authoritarian tendencies rationalized by Trump. This explains why it’s especially hard to disconnect from politics this summer, as the shadow of Trump looms large, in the United States, in Canada and in the other countries he targets on a regular basis.
The spectacle presidency: How Trump governs through distraction

12 November
House Democrats release new Epstein emails referencing Trump
One of the emails is a 2011 message between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

4 November
Trump hosted ‘Great Gatsby’ Halloween party hours before SNAP funding lapsed
Democrats slammed the event held as millions lose food benefits.

22 – 23 October
The East Wing is gone, and Trump turns to damage control
Demolition crews finished taking down the White House wing Thursday while President Donald Trump defended the project.
The East Wing of the White House is gone.
Wrecking crews had completely removed the decades-old annex by midday Thursday, just three days after they started, to make way for a pet project of President Donald Trump: a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The teardown, which The Washington Post first reported Monday, prompted a massive backlash from historic preservationists and Democrats, who accused Trump of destroying a national landmark and doing so under a cloak of secrecy.
The East Wing will be replaced by the ballroom, offices for the first lady and her staff, as well as new “guest suites” for the “President’s White House Guests,” according to a project description on the résumé of lead architect James McCrery II.
White House officials said this week that the East Wing will be “modernized and rebuilt” but did not immediately clarify whether the offices or guest suites are included in the 90,000-square-foot footprint Trump has described. The White House also revamped its website to tout the planned ballroom, defending the project as a “much-needed and exquisite addition” to the campus…
Critics have accused Trump of rushing the ballroom project, skirting public review and razing decades of White House history. Surveys also show that the project is unpopular: YouGov polling conducted Tuesday found that 53 percent of Americans opposed demolishing part of the East Wing, 23 percent supported it and the remainder were unsure. …

22 October
Trump is leading a political revolution. Will he succeed?
(GZERO media) For 20 years now, we’ve been warned about China’s rise, America’s decline, and the inevitable collision between the two superpowers.
That’s not what’s happening today.
The bigger story of our G-Zero world, which I laid out during my “State of the World” speech in Tokyo on Monday, is that the United States – still the world’s most powerful nation – has chosen to walk away from the international system it built and led for three-quarters of a century. Not because it’s weak. Not because it has to. But because it wants to.

Jamelle Bouie: There’s a Reason Trump Fears No Kings
Trump needs division to fuel his autocratic plans and make his royal dream a reality. For this reason, he is working as hard as possible to divide this country against itself. But if we can take any sign from the public’s escalating response to this madness, it is that Trump just may, in the end, remind Americans of the vital power of acting together in solidarity with each other.

Republicans are ridiculing ‘No Kings.’ A striking new poll shows Americans aren’t laughing
(CNN) Republicans have spent many days trying to marginalize the massive anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies held across the country over the weekend.
They’ve argued the people involved were extremists and even predicted they would be violent (which turned out not to be true). They’ve claimed the protesters hate America. And they’ve argued that the “No Kings” message itself is nonsensical, given President Donald Trump is a democratically elected president who sometimes works with Congress.
Trump said Sunday that the people were “not representative of this country.” …
New polling, though, reinforces how much the thrust of the “No Kings” message has resonated with much of the American public.
In fact, a majority of Americans appear sympathetic to it, at least to some extent. And their ranks appear to be growing.

Letters from an American October 18, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
The No Kings demonstrations ran the gamut from hundreds of thousands of protesters in large, blue cities, to smaller crowds in small towns in Republican-dominated states. Together, they demonstrate that the administration’s claims to popularity are a lie. Such a high turnout means businesses and institutions that thought they must cater to the administration to appeal to a majority of Americans will be forced to recalculate.
And the protests showed that Americans care fervently about democracy.
Today, millions of Americans and their allies turned out across the United States and around the globe to demonstrate their commitment to American democracy and their opposition to a president and an administration apparently bent on replacing democracy with a dictatorship.

‘No More Trump!’: Protesters Denouncing the President Unite Across the Country
Large crowds turned out at ‘No Kings’ rallies on Saturday that took place in large cities and small towns
(NYT) They were teachers and lawyers, military veterans and fired government employees. Children and grandmothers, students and retirees.
Arriving in droves across the country in major cities and small towns, they appeared in costumes, blared music, brandished signs, hoisted American flags and cheered at the honks of passing cars.
The vibe in most places was irreverent but peaceful and family-friendly. The purpose, however, was focused. Each crowd, everywhere, shared the same mantra: No kings.
Collectively, the daylong mass demonstration against the Trump administration on Saturday, held in thousands of locations, condemned a president that the protesters view as acting like a monarch.
Republicans Know How Vulnerable Trump Is. The Attacks on No Kings Prove It.
Jamelle Bouie
(NYT) In the four months since the last No Kings protests, President Trump has gone even further down the road of claiming plenary authority over the executive branch. He has continued to claim the right to fire anyone he pleases, to cancel or spend federal funds outside congressional appropriations and to launch lethal strikes against foreign civilians without explicit authorization from Congress or evidence of imminent threat to Americans.
The president has tried to leverage the power of the federal government against his political opponents and legal adversaries, sending the Justice Department after James Comey, a former director of the F.B.I.; Attorney General Letitia James of New York; and one of Trump’s former national security advisers, John Bolton. Trump also wants to use the I.R.S. and other agencies to harass liberal donors and left-leaning foundations. He has even tried to revive lèse-majesté, threatening critics of his administration and its allies with legal and political sanctions. With Trump, it’s as if you crossed the bitter paranoia of Richard Nixon with the absolutist ideology of Charles I.
Today’s protesters, in other words, are standing for nothing less than the anti-royal and republican foundations of American democracy. For the leaders of the Republican Party, however, these aren’t citizens exercising their fundamental right to dissent but subversives out to undermine the fabric of the nation.

10 October
Trump’s very own Wormtongue is goading him to declare martial law
By John Stoehr
(Raw Story Commentary) Today, I have a few things to say about that putz Stephen Miller. First, he’s been on TV a lot lately, because that’s how he pours more poison onto the president’s already-poisoned brain. He doesn’t whisper lies into the ear of the old and demented sovereign the way Wormtongue does in Tolkien’s epic. King Théoden didn’t have a TV. King Donald can’t stop watching his. So Stephen Miller delivers poison that way.
I have talked a lot before about how Trump has dementia and how growing public awareness of his disease could make him vulnerable to the allegation that he’s not really in charge – that malicious and unaccountable forces are pulling his strings. But I haven’t talked about how. Well, this is how. And Stephen Miller is doing it in plain sight.
The second thing I want to say about that putz is about his personality, specifically, about the character of a man who goes on TV to goad an old, demented president into invoking the Insurrection Act to impose martial law. (Miller seems to believe if he says “insurrection” on TV enough times, something in Trump’s head will finally click.)

9 October
Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel peace prize
US president may impose tariffs, demand higher Nato contributions or even declare Norway an enemy, analyst says
With hours to go until the announcement of this year’s Nobel peace prize, Norwegian politicians were steeling themselves for potential repercussions to US-Norway relations if it is not awarded to Donald Trump.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee pointedly said on Thursday that it had reached a decision about who would be named 2025 peace prize laureate on Monday, several days before Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire under the US president’s Gaza plan.
Taking into account the timeframe and the composition of the independent five-person committee, most Nobel experts and Norwegian observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize, leading to fears in the country over how he will react to being overlooked so publicly.
8 September
Need I list all the reasons why Trump shouldn’t get a Nobel peace prize?
Sidney Blumenthal
… Among the numerous reasons that make him one of the least deserving people in the world who should be honored, he has single-handedly destroyed the United States Agency for International Development, which has saved hundreds of millions of people from hunger and disease, and promoted democracy and the rule of law around the world. In an executive order issued on his inauguration day, 20 January, Trump slandered USAID as “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” and claimed that its workers “serve to destabilize world peace”.
That act of malice by itself should be sufficient to erase Trump from the longest long list.

8 October
Trump is clearly mentally diminished — Dems must target these people pulling his strings
John Stoehr
(Raw Story) … It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s someone in the White House who really hates Trump, despite working for the hate regimes, and actively seeks ways to humiliate him. (Consider the unknown aide responsible for putting makeup on his hand to cover up whatever ailment he has. The makeup’s color and his skin color are so mismatched that you can’t help thinking it was done on purpose!)
More important is that it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s someone – or a group of someones – that recognizes the chance to seize the reins of power for themselves and if it goes sideways, Trump can take the fall.
The president very often doesn’t seem to know what’s going until an outsider tells him. It could be a congressional Democrat. For instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump didn’t understand the coming spike in insurance premiums, the result of him and the Republicans failing to renew federal subsidies.
… the Washington press corps really should be asking, as Dan Froomkin recently suggested:
“Is he a confused old man?
“Is he being manipulated by his staff?
“Is he delusional? Is he gaslighting us?
“Who’s in charge?”
On Friday, I argued that the growing awareness of the president’s dementia (so far primarily due to Pritzker’s use of the d-word) could present an opportunity for coalition-building – between anti-Trump partisans who always believed him to be a threat to democracy and non-partisan swing voters who supported him in the mistaken belief that he’d solve pressing problems, like inflation and the cost of living. …

23 September
Donald Trump’s sharia law attack on Sadiq Khan outrages Labour MPs
Keir Starmer is facing demands from Labour MPs to reprimand Donald Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed London wanted to “go to sharia law” under its “terrible mayor”, Sadiq Khan.
In an address to the UN general assembly, Trump said: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed. Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
The development will cause further discomfort in No 10 after Trump was last week honoured with an unprecedented second state visit to the UK. Starmer has repeatedly cited the ability to avoid the worst of US tariffs as a reason for his largely conciliatory approach to Trump.

Robert Reich: We have clear proof the tide is turning on Trump
[the great sleeping giant of America] is starting to roar again now — at the sociopathic occupant of the Oval Office who won’t tolerate criticism, who in one wild week revealed his utter contempt for the freedom of Americans to criticize him, to write or speak negatively about him, even to joke about him.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs. The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.
And when he does, the good sense of the American people causes him to put an end to whatever it was that awakened him.

22 September
Trump lionizes Charlie Kirk, warns of dangers to America
Trump’s hate for his opponents can’t be reconciled with his faith — or his oath
Trump’s admission that he hates his opponents calls into question the Christianity he professes but, as importantly, it shows he doesn’t believe he’s everybody’s president.
(MSNBC Daily) …demonstrating that he can’t even allow the deceased to be the focus at his own memorial service, Trump interjected: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry.”
… Trump’s partiality toward his supporters was already clear. The most recent, glaring example, came after Kirk was killed. Trump had flags lowered for Kirk, and Air Force Two flew Kirk’s body from Utah to Arizona, but Trump didn’t so much as call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in June after Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot, and Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were injured.

7-8 August
Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Renovation Plans
(NYT) President Trump plans to build a $200 million ballroom off the East Wing “long before” the end of his term in 2029.
‘Trump is a wrecking ball’: behind the president’s $200m plan to build a White House ballroom
(The Guardian) Trump, who made his money in the New York construction industry, intends to build an enormous $200m ballroom for hosting official receptions, one of the biggest projects at the White House in more than a century.
This will be just the latest step in a radical architectural overhaul intent on making the 225-year-old executive mansion less redolent of stuffy Washington and more evocative of Mar-a-Lago, his gaudy palace in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump has revamped the Oval Office by splashing the room in gold, from the stars surrounding the presidential seal on the ceiling to gold statues on the fireplace to the mantel itself. He crowded its walls with numerous portraits, while just outside the office is a framed photo of Trump’s mugshot as featured on the cover of a New York tabloid newspaper.
Whereas the East Room, currently the biggest room in the White House, can accommodate about 200 people, the new structure will span more than 8,000 sq metres (90,000 sq ft) and have space to seat 650 people. Work will begin in September and is expected to be completed before the end of Trump’s second term, in January 2029.
A model of the ballroom presented by the government shows it will be a white building with tall windows reminiscent of the main White House edifice. It will replace the East Wing, which usually houses the offices of the first lady, and it remains unclear where they will be relocated.
Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Renovation Plans
President Trump plans to build a $200 million ballroom off the East Wing “long before” the end of his term in 2029.
(NYT) Experts on historic preservation are raising concerns over the feasibility of President Trump’s plans to complete large-scale renovations to the White House by the end of his term, and whether the project can be done while respecting the historic nature of the building.
The sheer scale of the project — a giant ballroom attached to the East Wing — worries preservationists. “It could do some harm to the property over all,” said Richard Longstreth, a professor of American studies at George Washington University. “There aren’t any checks and balances here, unfortunately.”

Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American July 31, 2025
On Monday, at a meeting with U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, President Donald Trump boasted that he was solving all the world’s problems: “I’ve stopped six wars in the last—I’m averaging about a war a month. But the last three were very close together. India and Pakistan, and a lot of them. Congo was just and Rwanda was just done, but you probably know I won’t go into it very much, because I don’t know the final numbers yet. I don’t know. Numerous people were killed, and I was dealing with two countries that we get along with very well, very different countries from certain standpoints. They’ve been fighting for 500 years, intermittently, and we solved that war. You probably saw it just came out over the wire, so we solved it….”
Yesterday, as Jeff Tiedrich noted, he promised he would fix the United States as well. “I think we’re gonna have the richest economy you’ve ever seen. We have money coming in that we’ve never even thought about, at numbers that nobody’s ever seen before. We have a deal with Japan where they’re going to pay us $550 billion. We have a deal with Europe where they’re doing 750 billion plus 400 billion, plus 300 billion, and many other countries.”
Today the administration announced that Trump is adding a 90,000-square-foot event space to the White House. The White House itself, excluding the East Wing and the West Wing, is about 55,000 square feet.

27 July
Gwynne Dyer: Put up with Trump to keep Vance from top job
Nobody outside the U.S. has any influence on how the political storm growing there comes out, but everybody has a stake in the outcome.
The arrival of Trump 2.0 has been a shock to both the global trading system and the alliance structures that had prevailed since the 1950s, but they are adjusting fast and fairly well to the new realities. Or at least, it could have been a lot worse.
It could still take a turn for the worse, of course, but that’s always the case. The task, when things are threatening to fall apart, is always to decide what is really important to preserve, and make your other choices and goals serve that overriding objective. Right now, that means keeping J.D. Vance from the throne, even at the cost of putting up with Trump.
We should all work to ensure Trump remains in office for the remaining 42 months of his four-year term. He would only leave voluntarily if his entanglement in the Epstein affair grows so damning he has to resign in order to be pardoned by his successor, President J.D. Vance, but that is not out of the question.
The great virtue of Trump as candidate for the role of first American dictator is he’s not up to the job. The push toward a soft fascist authoritarian system is real and quite rapid – the ever-growing ICE is emerging as his private army – but his instinctive preference for a state of chaos that maximizes his options is not a sound foundation for a lasting dictatorship.

16-18 July
Trump sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over Epstein report
President follows through on libel threat over report that said he sent Epstein ‘bawdy’ birthday note and sketch
Trump worked to kill a story about his friendship with Epstein. Now we know why
Margaret Sullivan
The president is reportedly ‘on a warpath’ over a story in the Wall Street Journal – controlled by Trump’s top media ally
Now that the story has been published – appearing on the Journal’s print-edition front page, no less – and picked up everywhere, it’s easy to see what Trump was so upset about. And equally easy to see why trying snuff it out in advance became such a high priority.
… It’s where the story was published: in the Wall Street Journal, whose conservative opinion side has often backed him and whose news side has a reputation for ensuring that explosive stories are bulletproof: accurate in their facts and fully prepared to stand up under legal scrutiny. …
Will this be an element of Trump’s long-awaited downfall? Few are willing to go that far, after all the scandals that have come and gone, too numerous to detail and each one regarded as the final straw.
But at a time when Magaworld is finally having its doubts about their dear leader and savior, this one really hurts.

Nobody (Not Even Trump) Can Control the Epstein Story
Welcome to the era of late-stage conspiracism.
By Charlie Warzel
(The Atlantic) Donald Trump helped create a monster. Now he’d like for everyone to ignore it.
After years of sounding dog whistles and peddling outright conspiracism to work his supporters into a lather about global pedophile rings, Trump is telling those same people to move on.
… In short, Trump appears to have lost control of the situation. In a second term that’s been defined by chaos, unpopular policies, and the dismantling of the federal government, Trump has managed to bounce back from one scandal after another. Except, perhaps, from this one. If there’s one person who can derail a Trump presidency, it appears that it might be a convicted sex offender who has been dead nearly six years.
The Jeffrey Epstein saga is just about perfect, as conspiracy theories go. At its core, it’s about a cabal of corrupt billionaires, politicians, and celebrities exploiting children on a distant island—catnip for online influencers and QAnon types who have bought into any number of outlandish stories.
At the center is a genuine secret: the specter of Epstein’s so-called client list, a document that supposedly contains the names of powerful people whom Epstein provided girls to. This list is the basis for the most sordid and compelling parts of the conspiracy theory: that Epstein not only facilitated the trafficking of these girls to elites, but that he then entrapped and extorted those elites. …

11 July
Robert Reich: Trump’s Magnet of Malevolence
Why Miller, Vought, Bondi, Patel, Noem, Vance, Kennedy Jr., Rubio, and Hegseth are amplifying his cruelty
The conventional explanation for why Trump’s second term is far more extreme than his first (which was extreme enough) is that the guardrails are now gone.
The people who occupied significant roles in the White House and Cabinet during his first administration — who talked him out of (or subverted) his illegal and unconstitutional cravings — are no longer there. In their places are loyalists who will do whatever he wants.
But this conventional view overlooks a more important explanation.
He’s more extreme this time because he’s attracted people around him who are also extreme and pushing him to new levels of malevolence.

4 July
Welcome to the Mafia Presidency
That’s a nice business you’ve got there.
By David Frum
Theoretically, it’s illegal for the president to accept or solicit bribes. The plain language of the statute is perfectly clear: It is a crime for a public official to seek or receive “anything of value” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act.” The prohibition applies whether the public official seeks or receives the bribe personally or on behalf of “any other person or entity.”
As I said: theoretically. On Tuesday, the media-and-entertainment conglomerate Paramount announced a $16 million payment to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library. The payment settled a lawsuit that Trump had filed against the Paramount-owned broadcaster CBS because he was unhappy with the way the network had edited an election-season interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris. …
U.S. law forbids both accepting a bribe and soliciting a bribe, yet they’re not exactly the same offense. There is an important difference between a police officer who takes money to let a criminal escape and a police officer who uses the threat of arrest to extort money from an innocent citizen. Paramount did not come up with the idea to pay Trump $16 million; Trump decided to squeeze Paramount for the money. What’s going on here is extortion—and it does not get any less extortionate for being laundered through Trump’s hypothetical future library. A systematic pattern has emerged: shakedowns of law firms, business corporations, and media companies for the enrichment of Trump, his family, and his political allies. Every time targets yield, they create an incentive for Trump to repeat the shakedown on another victim.

27 June
Rwanda and Congo Sign U.S.-Brokered Peace Treaty
President Trump claims credit for the outcome.
(NYT) … Mr. Trump used the effort to cast himself as a global peacemaker, even as he has sought to distance himself from other conflicts he once promised to end quickly, such as the war in Ukraine. On Friday, as he presided over the event with the African diplomats at the White House, he promoted his negotiated cease-fire between Israel and Iran, and efforts to get NATO to accept his demand to increase military spending. …

23 June
Frank Bruni: Trump Goes to War. And These Are His Advisers?
When an American president makes an especially weighty decision, there’s some small comfort in knowing that seasoned, steady aides were in the mix, complementing the commander in chief’s instincts with their expertise.
President Trump dropped 15-ton bombs on uranium enrichment sites in Iran with Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary.
…would-be despots make sure that the people just below them really and truly owe them. Gabbard; Hegseth; the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel; so many of Trump’s other flunkies — if not for him, they’d never enjoy the titles, the offices, the attention, the entourages they do. That primes their loyalty. It greases their sycophancy.
But while it was one thing to mull the lunacy of many of Trump’s personnel choices as they strutted through Senate confirmation hearings, it’s quite another to confront their inappropriateness when an impulsive, mercurial president takes a risk this enormous, commencing the kind of military intervention he long railed against, in a combustible region that he previously expressed such wariness about.

11-15 June
Military parade rolls through DC as ‘No Kings’ protesters across US decry Trump
(AP) — The grand military parade that President Donald Trump had been wanting for years barreled down Constitution Avenue on Saturday with tanks, troops and a 21-gun salute, playing out against a counterpoint of protests around the country by those who decried the U.S. leader as a dictator and would-be king.
The Republican president, on his 79th birthday, sat on a special viewing stand south of the White House to watch the display of American military might, which began early and moved swiftly as light rain fell and clouds shrouded the Washington Monument.

Trump’s team claims 250,000 supporters watched his military parade. ‘No Kings’ protests drew at least 4 million, experts say
(The Independent uk) Following the Saturday event in the Capitol, the Trump administration was quick to tout what appeared to be inflated attendance numbers and brand the “No Kings” protest, which drew millions across events in some 2,000 cities and small towns across the country, as an “utter failure with minuscule attendance.”
‘No Kings’ Rallies Draw Massive Crowds of Anti-Trump Protesters
(Bloomberg AI summaries) Protesters gathered in hundreds of cities across the US to oppose President Donald Trump’s administration, coinciding with a military parade in Washington on his 79th birthday.
Demonstrations took place in major cities including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, with organizers planning around 2,000 events nationwide under the banner of “No Kings”.
Despite some clashes with police and arrests, the protests were largely peaceful, with thousands of people participating and expressing opposition to Trump’s administration and its policies.
‘No Kings’ rallies draw huge crowds to protest Trump and his policies
(WaPo) Across the country, relatively few disruptions were reported during protests and marches where the mood ranged from joyful to defiant.
What to know about ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump’s policies
(AP) Opponents of President Donald Trump’s administration are set to rally in hundreds of cities on Saturday during the military parade in Washington to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary, which coincides with Trump’s birthday.
The “No Kings” protests are set to take place to counter what organizers say are Trump’s plans to feed his ego on his 79th birthday and Flag Day. “No Kings” will follow several days of nationwide protests against federal immigration raids including in Los Angeles, where Trump’s deployment of the National Guard further agitated his opponents.
The Army birthday celebration had already been planned. But earlier this spring, Trump announced his intention to ratchet up the event to include 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks and Paladin self-propelled howitzers rolling through the city streets. He has long sought a similar display of patriotic force.
The “No Kings” theme was orchestrated by the 50501 Movement, a national movement made up of everyday Americans who stand for democracy and against what they call the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration. The name 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement.
‘No Kings’ protests nationwide to push back on Trump’s ‘overreach’
On the same day as the president’s military parade in D.C., thousands of people are expected to protest what they call his dangerous brand of authoritarianism.

11-14 June
Takeaways From Trump’s Military Parade in Washington
The events in the capital were overshadowed by an assassination in Minnesota and turmoil in the Middle East.
(NYT) The event, which was officially billed as a tribute to service and a showcase of American military history, was hailed by the president’s supporters as a show of strength and a savvy recruitment tactic.
But his critics argued that the event was a further politicization of the military, especially after of a tense week in which Mr. Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles to quell protests.
The day’s events were overshadowed by political violence and war.
The bombings in the Middle East and the killings in Minnesota lent a far-graver tone to what already seemed sure to be a day of contrasts, with military vehicles rolling through the capital while mass demonstrations against the Trump administration roared in cities across the country.
The ceremony walked a careful line.
Over hours of coverage, conservative commentators repeatedly framed the parade as an expression of appreciation for the armed forces, free of any political messaging.
Context went unacknowledged.
Little about the event on Saturday seemed to address concerns among the president’s critics that his administration has politicized the military.
The spectacle was limited.
For an event that relied on mesmerizing production and an awe factor for spectators, a number of logistical obstacles and muted enthusiasm were palpable on the ground.
Reporters for The New York Times who attended the parade described an at-times underwhelming performance and crowds dispersing early amid a light drizzle.

The Shame of Trump’s Parade
Today’s events are another step in an ongoing effort to turn the U.S. military into a partisan—and personal—instrument of the president.
By Graham Parsons
Today—250 years since the Continental Army officially formed to fight for the independence of the American colonies against the British monarchy—marks a milestone in President Donald Trump’s effort to politicize the U.S. military. Though they are rare, military parades have happened before in Washington, D.C. For the most part, these have been celebrations of military achievements, such as the end of a war. But today is also Trump’s birthday, and what he and his supporters have planned is a celebration of Trump himself.
When the military gets politicized (podcast)
(WaPo) As troops descend on Washington to show off U.S. military might, the National Guard is being sent to respond to protests in Los Angeles and accompany ICE on raids. At the same time, President Donald Trump is saying the military’s mission is not to spread democracy, but to “dominate any foe.” Contributing columnist and Navy veteran Theodore R. Johnson joins Drew Goins and Molly Roberts to discuss what happens when the military is sent into cultural battlegrounds, whether the parade will make anyone feel more patriotic and what military service means today.
What real patriots should think about Trump’s parade
Theodore R. Johnson
We can feel pride in our country despite politics and history of injustice.

10 June
The Silence of the Generals
The top officers of the U.S. military wear eagles or stars on their shoulders that give them great privilege, as befits people who assume responsibility for the defense of the nation and the welfare of their troops. They command the power of life and death itself on the field of battle. But those ranks also carry immense responsibility. If they are truly Washington’s heirs, they should speak up—now—and stand with the first commander in chief against the rogue 47th.
By Tom Nichols
(The Atlantic) President Donald Trump continued his war against America’s most cherished military traditions today when he delivered a speech at Fort Bragg. …a ramble, full of grievance and anger, just like his many political-rally performances.
… He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.
The president also encouraged a violation of regulations. Trump, himself a convicted felon, doesn’t care about rules and laws, but active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials. Trump may not know these rules and regulations, but the officers who lead these men and women know them well. It is part of their oath, their credo, and their identity as officers to remain apart from such displays. Young soldiers will make mistakes. But if senior officers remain silent, what lesson will those young men and women take from what happened today?
… Today, he showed that he has no compunction about turning every American soldier into a hooting partisan.

Trump Declares Dubious Emergencies to Amass Power, Scholars Say
In disputes over protests, deportations and tariffs, the president has invoked statutes that may not provide him with the authority he claims.
(NYT) Legal scholars say the president’s actions are not authorized by the statutes he has cited and are, instead, animated by a different goal.

Los Angeles mayor imposes curfew on downtown following increased nighttime violence
(AP) — Mayor Karen Bass issued a curfew for downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday “to stop the vandalism, to stop the looting.”
She said in a news conference that she had declared a local emergency and that the curfew will run from 8 p.m. Tuesday until 6 a.m. Wednesday. The curfew will be in place in a 1 square mile (2.59 square kilometer) section of downtown that includes the area where protests have occurred since Friday.
Newsom asks court to block Trump’s use of military to support LA immigration raids
Gavin Newsom is warning that Donald Trump’s use of troops where state and local officials don’t want them is actually a test, one the Republican president may seek to replicate across other American towns and cities as part of his mass deportation effort. “We’re getting word that he’s looking to operationalize that relationship and advance significantly larger-scale ICE operations in partnership and collaboration with the National Guard,” the Democratic governor said on the podcast Pod Save America. Such a move would likely be illegal for reasons similar to those Newsom has cited in litigation to stop Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles. Legal experts have said that, as with many of Trump’s emergency declarations since he took office, there is no legal basis for the Republican’s move to take control of the California National Guard.
State and city officials have reported that protests against Trump and his immigration raids have been largely peaceful during the day with minor skirmishes at night, while limited to a few parts of a city that spreads over several hundred square miles. With no reported deaths and few injuries—some among journalists shot with plastic rounds by local police—protests have begun spreading across the country. Demonstrations have been held in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Texas and Washington. Meanwhile, Trump’s federalization of 4,000 members of California National Guard and his ordering of 700 active duty Marines to Los Angeles will reportedly cost $134 million for 60 days.

5 June
America’s Weak Strongman
Timothy Snyder
US President Donald Trump is strong in a relative sense: after he destroys institutions, what remains is his presence, surrounded by incompetent sycophants. But he is weak because, having destroyed so much state capacity, the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world.
(Project Syndicate) … Americans can choose to ignore that the state capacity needed to deal with adversaries has been gutted and/or entrusted to people whose only qualification is absolute fealty to Trump. But the destruction of the institutions of US power creates a very simple incentive structure for America’s enemies. The Russians hoped that Trump would return to the White House precisely because they believe he weakens the US. Now, as they watch him dismantle the CIA and FBI, putting the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi in charge of intelligence and federal law enforcement, they can only think that time is on their side.
… Wall Street might profit from the TACO trade in the short term, but a weak strongman brings only losses. While Trump’s supporters might be tempted to believe that he has made America a titan among nations, the opposite is true. As a strongman, Trump destroys the norms, laws, and alliances that held back war. As a weakling, he invites it.

31 May
Trump’s Promises of Easy Wins Meet Reality During a Rocky Week
(Bloomberg) President Donald Trump returned to office promising to easily fix generationally intractable problems, from quickly brokering peace in Ukraine and the Middle East to overhauling the federal government and rewriting the global trade order.
But this week showed just how far he is from solving any of them.
Ross Douthat: ‘TACO’ Is the Secret to Trump’s Resilience
The willingness to swerve and backpedal and contradict himself is a big part of what keeps the president viable, and the promise of chickening out is part of Trump’s implicit pitch to swing voters
…the acronym “TACO” — the reported Wall Street acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out” -an assumption that makes it safe to be in the market even when the president threatens Europe and China with intensifications of his trade war- gets at something that’s crucial to Trump’s political resilience. The willingness to swerve and backpedal and contradict himself is a big part of what keeps the president viable, and the promise of chickening out is part of Trump’s implicit pitch to swing voters — reassuring them that anything extreme is also provisional, that he’s always testing limits (on policy, on power) but also generally willing to pull back.

28 May
Robert Reich: Now that Elon is on the way out, who will be Trump’s ringleader?
Ever since his spectacular flame-out in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Elon Musk has been on the way out. Meanwhile, Trump seems to be losing interest in the job — other than getting revenge and making money.
The Trump Presidency’s World-Historical Heist
He is taking self-enrichment to a scale never seen before in America.
By David Frum
In his first term, he made improper millions. In his second term, he is reaching for billions: a $2 billion investment by a United Arab Emirates state-owned enterprise in the Binance crypto exchange using the Trump family’s stablecoin asset. An unknown number of billions placed by Qatar in a Trump-family real-estate development in that emirate, topped by the gift of a 747 luxury jet for the president’s personal use in office and afterward. Government-approved support for a Trump golf course in Vietnam while its leaders were negotiating with the United States for relief from Trump tariffs. Last week, Trump hosted more than 200 purchasers of his meme coin, many of them apparently foreign nationals, for a private dinner, with no disclosure of the names of those who had paid into his pocket for access to the president’s time and favor.

19 May
The Inside Story of Trump’s Search for a New Air Force One
Qatar had been trying to sell off a luxury jet for years, with no luck. Then President Trump’s team set its sights on it.
… After Mr. Trump looked at the plane, one thing was clear: It was love at first sight….

15 May
Frank Bruni: Nasty MAGA Infighting Means Trouble for Trump
Laura Loomer is unhappy. … She’s still professing big love. But it and she are clearly more complicated than many of us realized. And her gripes and infighting with others in the MAGA movement mean trouble for Trump.
Loomer exemplifies the danger — to Trump’s own fortunes as well as the country’s — of how he often sizes up potential allies. He looks not at the quality of their ideas but at the audacity of their provocations, not at how nicely they play with others but at how reliably they rile their followers. That’s a fine approach if you’re just owning the libs and staging a carnival. But if you mean to govern? The freak show gets in the way.

10 May
The many big things Trump ‘didn’t know’ about
Repeatedly in his second term, Trump has pleaded ignorance about major events and suggested he’s not involved in major decisions.
… On Wednesday, Trump said he “didn’t know that” when asked about a key Republican senator coming out against his controversial nominee to be U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin. The comments by Sen. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) had come a full day prior and appeared to end Martin’s confirmation hopes. In the days before, Trump had promoted Martin’s candidacy and reportedly made calls to key senators.
On Sunday, Trump was asked about more than a dozen layoffs the previous Friday in a program that provides health care for 9/11 first responders and survivors. “I’m not aware of anything that may have been brought up recently,” Trump said. By Tuesday, Fox News reported, nearly all the staff had been reinstated.
Key foreign policy issues
Often, Trump says he is unfamiliar with major foreign policy and military stories taking place around him.
… The Atlantic reported around noon on March 24 that one of its journalists had been added to top administration officials’ discussion of highly sensitive military attack plans on an unclassified app. More than two hours later, Trump was asked about it and said, “I don’t know anything about it.” He asked the reporter for more information about the situation.
6 May
The growing threat to U.S. democracy will literally cost lives
Andrew C. Patterson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, MacEwan University
According to a recent survey, most political scientists agree that President Donald Trump is turning the United States government into an autocracy, all too quickly.
(The Conversation) … Even the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post describes his first 100 days as a remarkable failure across multiple fronts.
The headlines have been blistering, calling those first 100 days “horrifying” and “inept.” Nor is the American public impressed: most give his performance a grade of D or F, according to a recent poll.
… One solution may be what we sociologists refer to as a social movement. This is where as many people as possible choose to act. Small interactions — like sharing an article with friends and family — can make a big difference, according to one prominent perspective in sociology.
Other means are more direct, like joining a protest or writing to members of Congress. And then there are decisions about what not to do. Universities and law firms are encouraged not to participate in the fraying of American democracy by making a “deal” with the Trump administration.
The take-home message is that the threat to American democracy is real and it is imminent. The impact on human health and well-being will be global. If the collapse of American democracy affects all of us, inside and outside of U.S. borders, then we can all agree to do something about it
5 May
A Person in the Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger Facebook Group posted – Weekend at Bernie’s/Donnie’s
He’s not advising Trump — he’s possessing him. Every lie that Trump croaks, every grotesque culture war stunt, every fascistic fever dream about rounding up immigrants or dismantling our rights — it’s [Stephen] Miller’s handwriting etched on the inside of Trump’s skull.
(Daily Kos) … Donald Trump isn’t running the country. He’s being wheeled around like a bloated prop, a sagging orange husk made to dance on command like an undead circus bear for what’s left of the base — part nostalgia act, part cult relic, all rot.
What we’re seeing isn’t leadership. It’s a reanimation ritual and the pale, serpentine ghoul casting the spell is none other than Stephen “Gargamel” Miller….
Trump slurs through speeches like he’s gargling grave dirt. He babbles about the Declaration of Independence being a unifying love letter, can’t explain the Monroe Doctrine beyond “it was a doctrine that came from Monroe”, and insists a clearly photoshopped image of Abrego Garcia’s hands with MS-13 in Times New Roman font is a smoking gun worthy of ending due process. The man is gone. The lights have gone out. There’s nothing left behind his haunted eyes save Adderall fumes and Hannity reruns.
… His only purpose is to waltz for the crowd while his ghoulish wizard adviser yanks his rigor mortised tendons to animate him from backstage. Miller doesn’t care that the old man is mentally decomposing. That’s the point. A confused and vacant figurehead is easier to manipulate into signing off on whatever racist, Nazi-esque blueprint the American Goebbels is perpetrating.
He’s not advising Trump — he’s possessing him. Every lie that Trump croaks, every grotesque culture war stunt, every fascistic fever dream about rounding up immigrants or dismantling our rights — it’s Miller’s handwriting etched on the inside of Trump’s skull.
4 May
Trump posts AI image of himself as pope, leaving Catholics offended and unamused as conclave nears
(CNN) Trump, who days prior joked that he would “like to be pope”, posted the digitally doctored image of himself wearing a white cassock and papal headdress, with his forefinger raised, to his Truth Social platform late Friday. It was then reshared by the White House on its official X account.

Mon, Jan 20 – Wed, Apr 30, 2025 The First 100 Days

28-30 April
Trump’s loyal footsoldiers doff their Maga caps at cabinet love-in
Red and navy hats were strategically placed as Trump’s cabinet gushed over 100 presidential days like no other
(The Guardian) …the unorthodox collection of headwear, embroidered with Donald Trump’s forced new name for the centuries-old Gulf of Mexico, was far from the most bizarre aspect of an extraordinary White House gathering hosted by the president on Wednesday.
The cabinet meeting to commemorate the first 100 days of Trump’s second term was, in the view of some social media commentators, something more akin to a gathering of Kim Jong-un loyalists in North Korea, each successive speaker trying to outshine the other in heaping lavish praise on their dear leader.
There was the sight of Elon Musk, the outgoing head of the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, placing one of the red Gulf of America hats on top of the Doge one he was already wearing.
Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American April 29, 2025
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt popularized the idea that the first 100 days of a presidency established an administration’s direction. As soon as he took office on March 4, 1933, he called Congress into special session to meet on March 9 to address the emergency of the Great Depression. Congress responded to the crisis by quickly passing 15 major bills and 77 other measures first to stabilize the economy and then to rebuild it. …
Trump’s administration does parallel FDR’s in an odd way. Trump set out in his first hundred days to undo the government FDR established in his first hundred days. Trump has turned the nation away from 92 years of a government that sought to serve ordinary Americans by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, protecting civil rights, and stabilizing global security and trade. Instead, he is trying to recreate the nation of more than 100 years ago, in which the role of government was to protect the wealthy and enable them to make money from the country’s resources and its people.
Trump’s Astonishing 100 Days, in 8 Charts
The first 100 days of Donald J. Trump’s second presidency have been a study of extremes, especially when compared with the start of presidential terms over the last century.
(NYT) Compared with other modern presidents, he has signed the most executive orders in this period, collected the most tariffs and had the most lawsuits filed against him. Markets have slumped, as have his approval ratings. …
The early results of his policy have included a large recent spike in the amount of money the federal government is collecting in customs duties. But amid the geopolitical and economic turmoil the tariffs have caused, critics have argued that the countries targeted by Mr. Trump will not bear all of the higher costs. Instead, the penalties may largely fall on the companies and American consumers who ultimately purchase the products that enter the country.
… One hundred days into his second term, Mr. Trump’s approval rating is underwater. Polls show that he has managed to turn long-term strengths on the economy and immigration into weaknesses.
An Unsustainable Presidency – Nothing about Donald Trump’s first 100 days has been ordinary.
By Jonathan Chait
(The Atlantic) … In just a few months, Trump has smashed democratic norms, crippled the federal bureaucracy, and realigned America against its traditional friends. Because Trump’s goals are so historically aberrant, the traditional measure of presidential achievement is of hardly any use. His Carter-esque record as legislator and economic steward stands in stark contrast to his Lenin-esque record in stamping out opposition.
Trump 100 days: delusions of monarchy coupled with fundamental ineptitude
Trump has wasted no time in trying to remake the US in his image – with results that are sweeping, vengeful and chaotic
(The Guardian) In three months Trump has shoved the world’s oldest continuous democracy towards authoritarianism at a pace that tyrants overseas would envy. He has used executive power to take aim at Congress, the law, the media, culture and public health. Still aggrieved by his 2020 election defeat and 2024 criminal conviction, his regime of retribution has targeted perceived enemies and proved that no grudge is too small.
Historically such strongmen have offered the populace a grand bargain: if they will surrender some liberties, he will make the trains run on time. But Trump’s delusions of monarchy have been coupled with a fundamental ineptitude.
His trade war injected chaos into the economy, undermining a campaign promise to lower prices and raising the spectre of recession; his ally Elon Musk wreaked havoc on the federal government, threatening health and welfare benefits for millions; his foreign policy turned the world upside down, making friends of adversaries and turning allies into foes.
Trump 100 days: tariffs, egg prices, Ice arrests and approval rating – in charts
The first few months have seen record-breaking use of executive powers – here are some of the outlying trends …
Trump Marks 100 Days by Vilifying Migrants and Attacking Opponents
(NYT) President Trump traveled to Michigan for events that were meant to demonstrate his commitment to American manufacturing. But his speech at a rally was dark and filled with grievance.
Trump hails achievements of first 100 days despite polls revealing American disapproval on economy – as it happened
President touts ‘most successful 100 days of any administration’ at rally in Warren, Michigan
(The Guardian) Trump inverts actual poll numbers to make false claim that Americans say country is headed in the right direction
Trump just made the entirely false claim that, “for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction”.
“For the first time ever, in, I think, ever, that they’re saying the country is headed in the right direction”, Trump added. “Has never happened before”.
It is not clear why the president thinks this is true, or indeed if he does, but it is very clearly not true.
In the latest nationwide poll, conducted from April 17-21 for the Associated Press by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the overwhelming majority of Americans said that the country is headed in the wrong direction (62% vs 37%)
28 April
Ian Bremmer: My thoughts on Trump’s First 100 days (YouTube video)
President Trump’s big-picture policy ideas (ending wars, securing the border, and fair trade) are popular and sensible. The implementation, however, not so much.
(GZERO media) It is a hundred days of President Trump’s second administration. How’s he doing? And the answer is not so well, certainly not if you look at the polls. Worst numbers for first a hundred days of any president since they’ve been taking those polls. Markets, of course, down, global economy also down, so much of this self-imposed. And it’s not the big-picture policy ideas. The things that Trump says he wants to do are not only popular, but they’re also sensible policy: end wars, secure the border, and fair trade. Running on those three planks would work for pretty much anyone in the United States, the things that Trump is committed to, the things that previous administrations, including Biden and the promise of Harris, had not been particularly effective at. But the implementation has been abysmal. The lack of interest in policy specifics, lack of ability to effectively execute, and the dysfunction inside the Trump team/teams, economy, national security has been really challenging.
100 Days In, This Is How Trump Is Upending American Government
(NYT) President Trump has wielded his office as an instrument of blunt power, ignoring outrage from Democrats and daring Republicans to challenge his authority.

27 April
Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, poll finds
After high expectations before he returned to office, most Americans say the president has made the economy worse.
(WaPo) As he nears the end of his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump is facing growing opposition to his ambitious and controversial agenda, with his approval rating in decline, majority opposition to major initiatives, and perceptions that his administration is seeking to avoid complying with federal court orders, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Trump Promised ‘Big, Beautiful’ Deals. Delivering Has Been Tougher.
So far, the goals of many of President Trump’s negotiations have been unrealized, even those he said would be accomplished in a matter of days or weeks.
(NYT) He quickly opened a dizzying number of negotiations to, naming just a few of his aims, end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, bring peace to the Middle East and usher in dozens of trade deals in record time. The war in Ukraine is still raging, and the president has floated the idea of abandoning peace talks altogether. Hamas is still holding hostages in Gaza despite Mr. Trump’s warning on social media that the terrorist group must release them all or “you are DEAD!” And while Mr. Trump insists that countries are racing to strike trade deals with the United States, the details are scant.