Trump administration

Donald Trump may have a four-year term, but he has far less time to make a real difference. In practice, he may have a year or perhaps eighteen months before the midterm election looms and Congress slows to a crawl. If Trump wants to be a transformational president — and he clearly does — then he will have to move fast. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s beginning with a series of rapid-fire appointments, most of which require approval from the new, Republican-majority Senate. (His White House aides, such as national security advisor, do not require Senate approval.) What message is Trump sending with his appointments so far? First, he demands loyalty — to him and to the agenda he articulated clearly on the campaign trail.

The reaction in most elected Republican circles to the naming of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for the most prominent positions in his administration has ranged from the exuberant, to the somewhat skeptical, to the truly head-scratching, to, in one obvious case, outright disgust. But what’s emerging now is a clearer picture of what Trump 47 has as an idea of his cabinet — and it’s far more consistent, and potentially transformative, than some observers currently seem to appreciate. Cabinets and top officials are most often drawn from a pool of experienced politicians with lengthy résumés, earned from decades of service in varied capacities and concentration in their particular area.

You better watch out, you better not cry... President-elect Donald Trump is coming to town. And according to a recent Associated Press report, he’s making a list and checking it twice — that's to say, he’s looking to enforce laws. It’s only November, but officials in DC are already preparing for the so-called disastrous effects of Trump’s reign come January. “We have been discussing and planning for many months in the case that the District has to defend itself and its values,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser in a briefing.  Who knows what disasters will befall us on January 6 when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes — but Bowser is prepared to request the support of the DC National Guard on that day.

Donald Trump’s second term administration is taking shape, and thus far it’s turned out to be impressively Catholic in its approach — representing Trump’s dominance of the Republican coalition and his capacity to ignore the worst instincts of some of his more vocal supporters on the New Right who see governance through a naive lens. One of the questions heading into this term was who Trump would disappoint by being insufficiently one thing or the other — by being too radical in some areas or too modest in others. But at this point, there are very few people disappointed in the names he’s chosen, outside of a handful of very online voices who had fantasies of their favorite pundits and follows on X getting a shot at cabinet positions.

When Donald Trump declared that Russia could do “whatever the hell it wants” to NATO countries, he was espousing his own lifelong credo. Trump has done whatever he pleases for most of his life. It was generous of him to extend the same carte blanche to the Kremlin, which is presumably pleased with his offer but has yet to comment on it publicly.  Once upon a time, conservatives used to raise an eyebrow over the notion over doing whatever the hell you want. They were in a more censorious mode, arguing that this amounted to moral relativism. Now it seems that anything goes.  The old certitudes are gone.