In Trump's Second Term, a Bolder President Charges Ahead Unchecked (it made me sick, be warned)
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In his first term, administration officials regularly curbed Trump’s impulses on matters big and small, including on tariffs, immigration and controlling the Federal Reserve. In his second, Trump has been surrounded by fewer people who try to dissuade him, according to White House officials, Trump allies and observers of the presidency. In recent days, Trump renewed a call to end mail-in voting, announced a new policy of coercing local governments into abandoning cashless-bail polices, threatened to send the military to Baltimore and said he’d like to send it to New York and Chicago as well, all of which pushes the bounds of his authority.
In one of the most aggressive steps yet in that direction, he tried to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook from her post on Monday, setting up a conflict with the Supreme Court, which has recently suggested that the central bank is protected from direct political manipulation. Some of his new directives are encouraged by advisers, while others appear to come from Trump himself.
Seven months into his second term, Trump has also taken to riffing more frequently about authoritarianism, after positing during the campaign he would be a dictator only on “day one” of his presidency. The comment drew outrage from Democrats, who built their losing campaign around Trump as a threat to democracy. In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump praised his own tough-on-crime policies in Washington, D.C., by returning to the theme. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator,’” he said. “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator,” he then added.
It’s Trump’s latest flirtation with a type of government that the U.S. shed at its founding, flexing federal muscle and busting through the norms that constrained other presidents.
Since taking office in January, Trump has threatened and extracted expansive settlements from top universities, law firms, tech and media companies. He sent U.S. Marines to Los Angeles over the objection of local elected officials, and took over Washington’s police force, ordering thousands of troops and federal officers into the streets. He fired the economics official who produced a monthly jobs report that irked him; ordered the firing of career officials at agencies; and even sought to fire officials at institutions he technically doesn’t run, including the National Portrait Gallery. Few aides have pushed back on any of the moves, and he has often been cheered on.
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Trump is motivated by “having control over all American institutions,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “He seems to want to grab everyone by the neck and say ‘I’m in charge.’”
More..
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/in-trumps-second-term-a-bolder-president-charges-ahead-unchecked-1c8c5b79?st=UhBjGt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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