Sometimes it’s fun to be right about big, important predictions. This is not one of those times. A year ago, I wrote that “a vote for Trump is a vote for chaos”, arguing that a second Trump term would feature constant battles between the President and the nation’s institutions:
So far, not all of my specific predictions have been borne out — we haven’t yet seen Trump launch attacks on the court system, the electoral system, the Fed, or the U.S. Military. But it has been only two weeks since Trump’s inauguration. Give it time.
But the institutional chaos that Trump has unleashed just in his first two weeks has been considerable. For example, as I predicted in that post, there is a huge purge underway at the FBI:
FBI personnel braced for a retaliatory purge of the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency, as President Donald Trump appeared ready to fire potentially hundreds of agents and officials who’d participated in investigations that led to criminal charges against him…David Sundberg, the head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, is also being fired…Sundberg…oversees some of the bureau’s most sensitive cases related to national security and counterintelligence….[T]hose investigations could stall, at least temporarily, if a large number of agents are suddenly removed…
Administration officials are reviewing records to identify FBI personnel who participated in investigations of the January 6 assault on the Capitol by his supporters…That could potentially involve hundreds if not thousands of agents, including those who interviewed and investigated rioters who were later prosecuted…
There is no precedent for the mass termination of FBI personnel in this fashion.
The FBI is trying to resist the purge, but there’s little doubt that Trump will prevail in the end; he is, after all, the chief executive.
Trump is also firing the federal prosecutors who prosecuted the January 6th insurrectionists. Whether that turns into a general purge of the Justice Department remains to be seen.
But these purges are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s also the tariffs that Trump announced he was slapping on Canada and Mexico. After the leaders of those countries sent some extra troops to beef up border security, Trump delayed the tariffs for one month. But the uncertainty created by the constant threat of major tariffs on America’s most important regional allies — and by the simple knowledge of Trump’s willingness to create those tariffs — will remain.
Then there was Trump’s attempted freeze on federal grants and loans. After mass confusion and a major outcry, Trump walked the policy back:
President Donald Trump rescinded an order freezing an array of federal grants, loans and financial assistance — a dramatic reversal after days of uncertainty and anxiety rocked governments and nonprofit organizations…The abrupt move — only two days after the freeze was first announced — quickly drew parallels to the chaotic policy roll-outs that regularly unfolded during Trump’s first administration…
The blanket freeze on all federal grants sparked confusion in Washington and state capitals, with the potential to disrupt a massive segment of federal spending that is relied on by local governments, schools and police departments across the country. The federal government awarded more than $1.2 trillion in grants alone last year, and another $2 trillion in loans.
What Trump has unilaterally frozen is all U.S. foreign aid — an unprecedented move that totally upends America’s relationship with many poor countries. The pause is supposedly only for 90 days, but Trump has moved to eliminate USAID, the government agency that administers most of America’s foreign aid. He’s being helped by Elon Musk, who has declared that USAID is a “criminal organization”. The abrupt cutoff of foreign aid could throw America’s relations with poor countries into chaos, just as Trump has already damaged relations with Canada, Mexico, and Europe.
Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) — not actually a government department, but just a bunch of guys Elon sends out to boss around the civil service, with Trump’s blessing — has been doing much more than dismantling USAID. Elon’s people have been given access to the payment systems that the U.S. uses to send out Social Security and other government payments. They’re using this access to go through government payments line by line, looking for items they think are wasteful or unnecessary. The WSJ reports:
The Treasury Department has agreed to give Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars in entitlement benefits, grants and tax refunds to Americans each year…Musk and DOGE have moved aggressively to exert control over the federal government’s back-office functions since Inauguration Day, following a cost-cutting blueprint he used when he bought Twitter. Musk has shown an eagerness to dive into agencies that make the administration run. That includes the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human-resources arm, and the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings…
A person familiar with the arrangement said DOGE representatives won’t have direct authority to stop individual payments or make other changes, describing their access as “read only.” Bessent approved the arrangement on the condition that the DOGE representatives’ activity be documented and monitored. DOGE representatives intend to review the overall efficiency of the payment system, the person said.
It’s highly irregular to give political appointees access to the entire operations of the government, but it hardly seems like the “coup” some progressives are claiming. There are reasons to be concerned over data privacy and security, but allegations that Musk has taken over the government seem overblown.
A far more disruptive move, as I see it, is if Trump decides not to spend the money that Congress has authorized. Presidents actually used to do this all the time — it’s called “impoundment”. Congress passed a law in 1974 to make impoundment illegal, but Trump may try to challenge the constitutionality of that law in court. If he wins, it would be a major loss of power for Congress, and a gain for the presidency. At that point, DOGE’s decisions on wasteful spending items might go from suggestions to the law of the land, and lots of checks might stop going out in the mail.
And in addition to throwing America’s government operations, trading system, and foreign relations into chaos, Trump is already causing chaos on a more granular, local level. He gave an order to open up two California dams, apparently based on the notion that this would make California a wetter place and decrease wildfire risk. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The winter is California’s rainy season, meaning that you want to fill reservoirs for the rest of the year, rather than letting the water escape downstream. And the water that Trump released won’t even flow to Southern California; it’ll go to the Central Valley. Trump backed off of the idea and shut the dams again after panicked locals complained.
Anyway, that’s just the first two weeks. Welcome to the next four years.
I think we need to ask a basic question: How did America arrive at such a sorry juncture in its history? Why did we decide to elect a President who wakes up every morning thinking of new ways to throw the nation into disarray? I have some thoughts on that, and on how we might get out of this mess. But first, because I had some success predicting what Trump would do once he was elected, I thought I might share some thoughts on what kind of chaos he’ll create next.
If these predictions are frightening, my apologies. In fact, I think they’re a lot less dire than if Trump were the fascist autocrat his critics believe him to be, but they’re still not particularly fun.
Predicting Trump’s next moves
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