The new president of the United States, Donald Trump, advanced Tuesday at the Oval Office, just one day after his investiture: “I think we are going to do things that will collide people.” I didn’t lie. It has been enough for a week in the White House, seven days of that new “golden era” that promised in its speech to take possession, to test the foundations of the American political system and the world order based on multilateralism.
The rhythm of the presidential debut is intense: he and his team have had four years of thorough planning. The result is a landing that attempts to leave the imprint of the new president in all areas, indelibly, already in a hurry. Without leaving time to reaction to those who oppose. Knowing that it has a limited time: on the one hand, to create among the voters the impression that it is a man of action that solves in five minutes what his predecessor Joe Biden did not achieve in four years. On the other, to implement its measures before Congress re -enters an electoral mode for the mid -mandate elections of 2026.
Some of their orders represent draft initiatives; Others seem mere talk destined to please their voters. Others are intended for revenge against their alleged enemies. The legality of a few already settled in court. One of them, the withdrawal of citizens by birth to the children of parents who are not permanent citizens or residents, have already been blocked in a court by unconstitutional.
This weekend, on its first official trip outside Washington to supervise the effect of fires on Los Angeles and the Hurricane Helene In North Carolina, he proposed to eliminate one of the federal institutions that the American on foot, FEMA, the agency responsible for responding to natural disasters and reconstruction after them. According to their approach, it would be the states who take care of the catastrophes in their territories. This Saturday, in Las Vegas, he announced the relief of tips, which had been one of his great campaign promises. On Monday there will be a great mass bath in Florida, at an annual meeting of the Republican Party in which it is likely to say or make new shocks.
While he was traveling, the State Department dealt with another blow to status quo. His new responsible, former Cuban origin Marco Rubio, suspended all foreign aid – military of millions of dollars – with immediate effect, including the one that Washington provided to Ukraine, in compliance with a Trump executive order. The only exceptions that are maintained for the moment, while the department completes an 85 -day review of the paralyzed programs, are the delivery of emergency food aid and the military assists to Israel and Egypt. It also grows the internal pressure for Ukraine to be left. Rubio can add other exceptions if he considers it necessary, but Trump’s instruction is sharp: “The industry and the bureaucracy of foreign aid do not align with US interests and in many cases they are opposed to US values,” appears in the order.
On Friday, Rubio spoke with his Danish counterpart, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, to treat among other things about “the deepening of bilateral and regional cooperation in security and defense.” In the American statement, Greenland was not mentioned, the Arctic Island under Copenhagen control that Trump wants to buy and considers essential for the national security interests of his country. But the president had already made it clear, in a call with the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, on the eve of his investiture, his interest in the strategic territory, despite Denmark’s assertions that he is not for sale.
A shower of executive orders
From just hours after his work, the brand new leader has resorted to a flood of executive orders, federal memoranda and grandiloquent statements – but that they are very serious – to try to expand the limits of his power, reduce those of the administration federal and impose a series of measures that have placed the federal administration and the migratory system. Many of them, such as the disappearance of FEMA, are initiatives that appear proposals in the Ultraconservator Manifesto Project 2025, which during the campaign the Republican said he did not know that not a few of his collaborators had collaborated in him. Trump has unleashed the alarm between the communities of migrants, released to 1,500 assailants of the Capitol and sown the dismay in the capitals of allied countries.
Throughout this week he has announced the withdrawal of the Paris Agreement against climate change and the World Health Organization (WHO). In Davos he demanded that NATO allies increase their military expenditure to 5% of their GDP – in front of the current 2% objective. He also complained about the alleged abuse of European partners to US companies. Threat to their neighbors in Mexico and Canada with taxing their products with 25%. In his investiture speech he raised his interest in recovering control of the Panama Canal.
In his second term, Trump is the leader with more power in decades in the United States. More than a classic president, he begins to look like an emperor not subject to any control, and with aspirations of territorial expansion in Panama or Greenland included. He has under his command the three powers: in addition to the White House Executive, his Republican party has a majority – very reduced, but most – in the two cameras of the Legislative Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Judiciary, the Supreme Court, is conservative: Trump appointed three of his new magistrates, who joined three other conservatives. But in addition, this court already ruled last summer that the president has immunity for the acts committed in the exercise of his position: the fear of being tried for steps that may constitute an abuse of his power has disappeared.
Surrounded by a selected team, first of all, for its loyalty, and wrapped by some bases inflated by a more forceful electoral victory than expected – and for measures such as the pardon to those who assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to try to keep it In power after losing the 2020 elections – on the other hand he finds a Democratic opposition who, after his electoral defeat in November, divided and demoralized, fails to agree on the strategy to follow.
The bulk of their measures have been directed towards one of its great phobias, irregular immigration. It does not rule out displaying troops in Mexico for the fight against drug cartels. He has sent more soldiers to the southern border and plans to display even more to “seal” the dividing line. He has also suspended the right of asylum, has canceled refugee flights and has launched deportations on military flights. It even raises the cancellation of permits for those received from a legal immigration program of the Biden Administration, which has benefited about one million people.
His first alluvion of executive orders this week was aimed at submitting to the body of federal officials, which Trump considers that he systematically hinders his program of measures in his first mandate. As the 2025 project suggested, he plans to classify thousands of public workers as “political appointments”, something that can withdraw the labor protections they enjoy. It flirts with the idea of dismantling entire agencies, such as the body responsible for responding to natural disasters, FEMA. In the name of the “meritocracy” has eliminated the programs that encourage diversity among officials, which had existed since the era of the struggle for civil rights. And these federal employees have been required to betray colleagues who try to continue these practices in a sub -ptical way.
With a signature of signature, Trump has also launched a series of revenge measures against other alleged enemies. He has retired the escort to his former collaborators John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, threatened by Iran, and his former responsible for the fight against Covid, Anthony Fauci. By his instruction, the Pentagon has withdrawn the portrait of his former chief of staff, General Mark Milley, who as Bolton accused Trump of “fascist” inclinations during the electoral campaign.
His new responsible for justice and intelligence, Pam Bondi and Tutsi Gabbard, if they are confirmed, will have to review the management of federal departments during the Biden era, something that opens the perspective to possible vendettas. In an interview for the Fox chain on Wednesday Trump came to insinuate his desire to submit to his predecessor, Joe Biden, and others of his circle to the same politicized judicial Calvary that he argues to have lived during the last four years.
Meanwhile, he has relaxed the scrutiny towards his. With the argument that the current system to investigate candidates for official positions and grant them authorizations for classified information is “bureaucratic”, it has allowed a whole list of their circle to access the White House and its computer systems without undergoing That type of check. This weekend was ceased a dozen general inspectors, responsible for supervising the government departments.
However, the technological oligarchs that, with Elon Musk at the head, have been approaching this year and in particular after November, and who have contributed penguins to the investiture ceremony, have been rewarded, such as the pardons of the Capitol: From an extension of 75 days for Tiktok, the short video platform forced by law to separate from its Chinese owner or be prohibited, to a medium billion program in investments in artificial intelligence, through an executive order on cryptocurrencies .
Other great beneficiaries among their supporters: those convicted of the assault on the Capitol, who have received a generalized pardon, even those arrested for violence against the police that day. Trump has indicated that he has amnestied them all because examining each case was “cumbersome”, and has subtracted importance to cases of violence against the police: “minor incidents,” he told Fox. A day later, one of the leaders of That assonated, Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, who had received an 18 -year -old sentence, sat quietly in one of the coffee shops of Congress. “The rule of law in this country has died,” said one of the police attacked that day, Michael Fanone, in the CNN chain.
The new White House, on the other hand, presents its first week to charge as a huge success. “President Trump’s second mandate has begun historically,” he says in a statement. “The president is taking advantage of all the moments to fulfill the promises he made to the American people,” he says.
