Trump starts with aggressive policy changes
Team's first month is just a preview, some insiders say
By: Francesca Chambers
and Zac Anderson
USA today
WASHINGTON - It's like clockwork. Most weekday afternoons, whether he's due to speak to the press or not, Prescient Donald Trump summons reporters.
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The Trump Hour is about to begin.
..... Since returning to office on January 20, [2025] Trump has used lengthy televised gab sessions - packed as executive orders signings - to make himself ubiquitous to American shooting form the hip on questions after question and dominating the news.
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The flood of orders and the verbal provocations that accompany them are part of an early strategy to overwhelm the system with aggressive policy changes and command the national conversation through brute administrative force, Trump allies and insiders say.
..... "They're talking a lot about what they're doing. And talking about it again and again and again," said Bradley Rateike, a former Trump White House aide. "They see that as a real tool to remind the American people of why they put them there."
..... The result has been one of the most head-spinning boundary-pushing, and politically polarizing opening stretches of a presidency in modern history. Trump ha quickly laid the groundwork for a consolidation of power, seeking top fire federal workers en masses, dismantle independent agencies, end birthright citizenship and impose tariffs on countries that have a trade surplus with the U.S. or have grieved him in some other way.
..... White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump has "taken historic action" in his first month and "has already accomplished more than most presidents do in their entire term."
..... And he's just getting started.
..... "I think you'll be surprised that pace might not slow down to a screeching halt, or a snail's pace, because there are stacks of more executive orders that have been through out,' said Ken Blackwell, a close White House ally at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.
..... It's an approach that has been refined from Trump's first term, when he arrived in Washington as a political novice. Eight years ago, Trump filled out his team with Bush-era appointees and Republican staffers, not all whom were hardcore MAGA. Leaks abound as rival aides tried to undercut each other.
..... Trump took some big swings, putting controversial travel restrictions on Muslin majority countries - which had to be rewritten after they were blocked in court. And it took his team until the end of his first year in office to get its first major legislative win: the 2017 tax cuts.
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Not this time, allies of the president say.
..... "They have a clear, general sense of whether they're going," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "they are intuitively moving forward and then modifying things as they figure out what works and what doesn't.
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Where President Joe Biden responded to national exhaustion with Trump after the Republican's first term by trying to stay off Americans' screen and out of their lives as much was possible, Trump has ingrained himself in the national culture. And he has surrounded himself with trusted allies who better understand the government than many early hires in his previous term.
..... Conservative groups AFPI and the Heritage Foundation spent months crafting blueprints for a second Trump administrator. Heritage spearheaded the Project 2025 proposed that was heavily criticized during the campaign and disavowed by Trump. yet the president has since implemented many f the ideas in the report and hired back aides such as budget director Russell Vought who were involved in crafting it.
..... AFPI was home to senior Trump officials such as Linda McMahon Brooke Rollins, Paula White and Keith Kellogg, who have las returned to Trump's orbit. "In many ways, they've telegraphed the road map," said Rateike, who worked on Trump's 2016 campaign and transition. Ginrich said the conservative groups "cerated a whole wave of capabilities so they can really enter in an aggressive way - and they've taken advantage of it."
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The change in approach has played out most vividly through the aggressive push by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by multimillionaire Elon Musk, to cut the size of federal agencies. DOGE has rocked the federal workforce with buyout offers, mass terminations of thousands of probationary employees and moves to shutter whole agencies. it has raised concern about data security and privacy along the way.
..... For those who think the approach is abrasive, Musk told reporters in the Oval Office that Trump was doing what he was elected to do.
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"The people voted for major government reform, and that's what people are going to get," Musk said.
..... DOGE has made a slew of error-filled personnel moves that had to be walked back, including, firing nuclear safety workers and those working to combat bird flu. Critics have argued the DOGE errors show an administration more concerned about sending a message that making smart changes.
..... But Republican push-back on Trump's move has been largely muted so far.
..... "If you take on the lobbyist bureaucrat system slowly, they'll just surround you and envelop you," Gingrich said. :So Trump has relied on a sledgehammer effect."
..... Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also shrugged off some of the early stumbles, arguing hat Musk and DOGE are committed to quickly correcting mistakes. McCarthy said he believes the broader push to rein in government spending is popular enough that voters are willing to accept mistakes. "If Elon would stop every time he sent a rocket up and it had a little problem, we wouldn't be at the forefront," he said of the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.
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DOGE's efforts too slash the federal workforce and take over sensitive data-bases holding the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans is unprecedented and has led to court cases claiming Trump is usurpring the constitutional spending power of Congress. Trump's early effort to go around Congress and neutralize other checks on his power, such as firing 17 independent inspectors general at government agencies, have also generated lawsuits and outcry.
..... "I the first month, [02/2025] download Trump has waged a scorched-earth campaign against the rule of law," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said in a floor speech last week. [02/20/2025]
..... Trump's penchant for testing the limits of his power has extended to an array of moves form proposing to acquire Greenland, Canada, the Gaza Strip, and the Panama Canal, to his Justice Department dropping corruption charges against New York city mayor Eric Adams so he can help Trump;s immigration agenda. The Adams decision led to a top New York federal prosecutor, who was promoted by Trump and had sterling neoconservative credentials, to resign along with others in New York and Washington.
..... The 47th president has been able to change the conversation aorta international issues such as Russia's war against Ukraine and the Gaza conflict through statements assailing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and jaw-dropping proposition like the one suggesting the U.S. should take control of Gaza.
..... Despite blow-back to some of these many moves and statements, the president's approval ratings have remained in the mid-40s - 15 points below Gallup's historical average for U.S. presidents since 1953 but five points higher than Trumps first term.
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But the made-for-TV strategy can only take Trump so far. What comes next could be more difficult as Trump works to make good on pledges to resolve international crises and as fallout from the DOGE cutting spree spreads to Republican congressional districts.
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High-level officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security advise Michael Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff were in Saudi Arabia last week [02/19/2025] to launch negotiations with the Russian to end the war in Ukraine. But they'll need Ukraine;s sign-off to get an agreement.
..... "These are very hard issues he's grabbed. It will only get harder, because then it'll be time to implement, and we have to get the rest of the folks in place that will do that," said Victoria Coates, a former Trump deputy national security adviser who's now at the Heritage Foundation.
..... Republicans also face hurdles in congress, including passing a government funding bill by March 14 [2025] and turning Trump's agenda into law with a narrow GOP majority. That's a tougher challenge than Trump's faced so far.
..... "Everything is going to be a struggle," predicted Paul Teller, a longtime Hill staffer and former legislative adviser to Trump.