I must admit, I’d heard absolutely nothing about Trump having designated Janette Nesheiwat as his nominee for Surgeon General until the news broke today that he was withdrawing her nomination, the day before her confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee. Seems that Nesheiwat, a 48-year-old who has appeared on Fox News, had repeatedly claimed her medical degree came from the University of Arkansas when it actually came from a medical school on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. The new nominee is Casey Mears, a 37-year-old graduate of Stanford Medical School who is described as a “wellness influencer” with close ties to HHS Secretary Kennedy.

The Fed met today for the first time since Trump’s tariff-focused “liberation day” five weeks ago, and declined for the third straight meeting to cut the Fed Funds rate further. In recent weeks Trump has been increasingly critical of Fed Reserve Chair Powell, whose term is set to expire in 2026, for not cutting interest rates more aggressively. On the other hand, Trump’s tariff policy has stoked inflation expectations, creating the possibility that the Fed’s next move might need to be a rate hike rather than a cut. Time will tell.

One of the many ways in which Trump has expanded his business interests into the crypto world since the election is through the launching of a memecoin, $TRUMP, approximately 80% of which is held by two Trump-owned entities. Recently Trump announced a promotion under which the top 220 holders of $TRUMP (as measured in a particular manner over a defined time period, rather than via a snapshot at a point of time) would be invited to a special event later this month with the President at one of his clubs, with the top 25 holders receiving further VIP access. Today crypto-critic Molly White published an analysis in which she estimates that almost three-quarters of the 220, and 23 of the top 25, are foreign entities or persons. She also estimates that “62% of those on the invite list had never purchased a $TRUMP token prior to the announcement, suggesting they were primarily drawn in by the promise of access to Trump rather than any longer term interest in the token itself.” Senator Ossoff recently commented at a town hall that, by “selling access for what is effectively payments to him,” Trump’s promotion in and of itself constitutes grounds for impeachment.

There is reporting today that the Trump administration intends to imminently start deportation flights of various Asian nationals to Libya. (I’m old enough to remember when Libya was a hostile power, labelled “beyond the axis of evil” in 2002 by John Bolton.) The federal district court judge in Massachusetts handling an existing case known as D.V.D. v. DHS issued an order today clarifying that previously issued injunctions would forbid such actions, inasmuch as those injunctions require “all third-country removals to be preceded, inter alia, by written notice to both the non-citizen and the non-citizen’s counsel in a language the non-citizen can understand as well as a meaningful opportunity for the non-citizen to raise a fear-based claim for” protection under the Convention Against Torture.

So there are a whole host of things going on in recent times that fall into the following general pattern:

1. The Trump administration does a thing, which represents a radical departure from the status quo.
2. Affected parties who think the thing is illegal, in substance and/or at least with respect to process, bring a suit in federal court.
3. A federal judge rules in favor of the affected parties and issues an injunction preventing the thing from going forward, possibly on a nationwide basis (as opposed to just with respect to the parties who brought suit).
4. In addition to pursuing the normal appellate process, the Trump administration goes directly to SCOTUS via the so-called shadow docket in order to try and get the injunction lifted.
5. SCOTUS needs to do something, which could mean leaving the injunction in place while the appellate process plays out (in which case the thing is delayed), or overturning the injunction while the appellate process plays out (in which the thing can, in effect, go ahead), or perhaps narrowing the scope of the injunction, or perhaps jumping the normal queue and getting into the merits of the legal issues.

I think I will be writing a lot of posts in this blog series about legal disputes that follow this type of pattern. That starts today, when SCOTUS released an order relating to a shadow docket case called U.S. v. Shilling.

This case has come out of a theme that I didn’t adequately address in my opening summary of the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, namely the administration’s “war on woke”. Consistent with views expressed in the campaign and that likely helped Trump win the election, the new administration has taken a number of aggressive positions against DEI in general and, in particular, against transgender rights.

As part of that, about a week after taking office Trump issued Executive Order 14183, the main thrust of which is the view that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” DOD policy towards transgender soldiers has been seesawing back and forth over the past decade, but in his first week of office President Biden had issued an executive order that reinstated a 2016 policy, which had been watered down by the Trump administration via a 2019 policy. The new 2025 policy would be harsher than the 2019 policy, in that it would lead to discharging all active duty trans soliders as well as prevent trans individuals from joining the military going forward.

The plaintiffs in this case, filing suit in federal court in Washington State, received a nationwide injunction preventing the administration from discharging trans soldiers. The 9th Circuit declined to stay that injunction. However today, over the objection of the 3 liberal justices, SCOTUS stayed the injunction while the government pursues appeals of the District Court finding to the 9th Circuit and, potentially, SCOTUS. As a practical matter, it appears this will enable the government to go ahead and start discharging trans soldiers (with, I suppose, the potential that they be reinstated down the line, were the government to ultimately lose the case).

It is hard to know what ought to be read within the tea leaves of today’s SCOTUS action. For one, like most shadow docket orders, the majority did not provide any explanation behind its ruling, nor did any of the dissenters choose to write anything. For another, the members of SCOTUS have some important information that none of the rest of us have: They presumably know the outcome and reasoning of U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case involving transgender rights and the 14th Amendment which was argued before SCOTUS in December but where the opinions have not yet been made public.

In other news, the administration’s war on Harvard continues. Today Secretary of Education Linda McMahon (yes, that’s the wrestling executive, and someone whose only prior background in education was serving one year on the Connecticut State Board of Education, from which she resigned as it was about to be reported that she had falsely claimed holding a bachelor’s degree in education) sent a truly unhinged letter to Harvard, in which she announced that the federal government will no longer provide any new research grants to the university. This is in addition to the administration’s action last month to freeze $2.2 billion in previously issued research grants, over which Harvard has filed a lawsuit.

Finally, Prime Minister Carney traveled to the White House today to meet with President Trump for the first time. Strangely, the two leaders met with reporters in the Oval Office before, rather than after, their private meeting.

On Friday, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released a report on the impact that DOGE has had on IRS staffing, between the firing of probationary workers and the deferred resignation program (in which workers could resign while receiving pay through September 30th). The report shows that while 11% of total IRS staffers have departed, the proportion is much higher among revenue agents (i.e., tax auditors): 31%.

There is also new reporting today from Bloomberg that the Trump Administration has decided to shut down the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a Reagan-era creation whose annual budget is $550 million and whose investigations netted more than $2 billion in forfeitures from criminals over the past two years, as of September 30th. Notwithstanding its name, OCEDTF’s mission focuses not just on drug trafficking, but more broadly on “illicit finance, human smuggling and trafficking, organized retail crime, sophisticated financial fraud, cyber-enabled crime, firearms trafficking, export violations, government benefits theft, business e-mail compromise, other federal criminal offenses, and U.S. sanctions evasion”.

Both of these actions appear broadly consistent with Trump’s apparent de-emphasis on combatting white-collar crime (including tax evasion).

In other news, the Department of Homeland Security today announced a new program under which individuals who voluntarily self-deport can receive free airfare and a $1,000 stipend. By comparison, it is apparently costing the federal government in excess of $17,000 on average to carry out each deportation. I remember when the word “self-deportation” got some attention in the 2012 Republican primary, but back then it was more in the context of creating conditions that would encourage those without legal documents to leave voluntarily, rather than paying them to do it at a time of their own choosing so as to avoid the risk of being rounded up and deported involuntarily.

Trump’s latest tariff salvo, announced last night via social media, is a proposed 100% tariff on foreign-made films, claiming (as he probably has to, in order to assert the authority to take this action) that foreign-made films are a “national security threat”. Nobody appears to really understand what this would actually mean or how it would help the domestic film industry, and today the White House is saying that “no final decisions have been made” on foreign film tariffs.

When I lived in Evanston, Illinois a quarter-century ago, our congresswoman was Jan Schakowsky, who was first elected to represent the Illinois 9th in 1998 and has long been one of the most progressive Democrats in Congress. Now 80, she announced today that she will not be running for a 15th term in 2026. This makes at least two very interesting Democratic primaries in Illinois for the upcoming cycle, in the wake of 80-year-old Senator Durbin’s recent announcement that he will not run for a 6th term in 2026. I see both announcements as a positive step in combatting our nation’s slide into gerontocracy.

In other election decision news, Republican Georgia Governor Kemp has just announced he will not challenge first-term Democratic Senator Ossoff in 2026, which is considered very good news for a Democratic party that is facing a tough Senate map in 2026.

As my “Election 2024” blogging project came to a natural end in mid-November, I had been thinking we were likely about to enter an extremely eventful period in American history, and that it therefore would be fruitful to document events under the “Trump 2.0” administration as they happen. What I had in mind was something like a daily journal, but trying to focus on the factual record as it evolves. However my professional life gets extremely busy in January, and the news started coming at an almost unbelievably fast pace, so the project did not get off the ground in a timely manner.

This week marked the 100-day mark of Trump’s second term, as well as the time of year when the end of my busy season is in sight. As such it is now more practical for me to carry on with my original concept. However in order to provide a modicum of context for what will come, I somehow need to try and summarize the Trump 2.0 administration so far, at least in its major themes. That is a daunting task and I imagine I will look back on this post over time and say “I forgot about X, and Y, and…” Still one must start somewhere.

DOGE. During the campaign, two of Trump’s richest surrogates — Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy — had announced that during a second Trump they would head up an informal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE (a name that pays homage to the original crypto memecoin, Dogecoin, of which Musk is a known supporter). The stated objective of DOGE during the campaign was as a means for finding material savings in the federal government budget, although it was unclear at the time what form the effort would take. Personally I thought it was a vague, feelgood campaign promise, rather than anything that would actually manifest itself post-election.

Well, I was wrong about that. Vivek left the effort before the inauguration in order to launch a campaign for Ohio Governor in 2026. But Musk jumped all-in to DOGE, serving as a “Special Government Employee” during the first 100 days of Trump’s term (albeit without making any of the usual financial disclosures or paying any attention to myriad conflict-of-interest issues), and at times seeming like he was, at a minimum, the co-President. It appears he is about to return his full attention to his business interests, which I’m sure his stockholders would appreciate (Tesla stock is down 29% over the first four months of 2025, and his involvment with Trump and DOGE has poisoned the Tesla brand in many circles, both domestic and foreign).

I think as a nation we will be coming to terms with the implications of DOGE for many years to come. Musk, given what appeared to be unlimited access to and ability to influence government operations, took the same “move fast and break things” approach that he took to Twitter. DOGE made widespread buyout offers to federal employees that didn’t comply with established processes; purported to fire all federal employees that were within their one-year probationary period, without regard to their individual job performance; immediately turned off funding for a variety of federal programs, even with respect to funds that had already been appropriated but were not yet disbursed; and eviscerated a number of federal agencies, particularly ones who had made inquiries into Musk’s own business activities (like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) or are otherwise seen by MAGAworld as antithetical to “American interests” (like the U.S. Agency for International Development). In the name of “government efficiency,” DOGE has done quite a bit to reduce government effectiveness while making only a very small dent in the overall cost of government.

And all of this happened with nary a peep from…

Congress. Recall that the result of the 2024 House election was a 220-215 Republican majority. However, Gaetz resigned from Congress in mid-November after Trump named him as the nominee for Attorney General, and even though his nomination fell apart before the new Congress was installed he declined to take his seat. As such the Congress started at 219-215 Republican. That was enough, barely, to allow Mike Johnson to survive a speakership vote: three Republicans originally voted against him but two switched their votes back before the window closed.

Since then, Rep. Waltz of Florida resigned to become National Security Advisor, and Republicans were elected to replace both Gaetz and Waltz, albeit with significantly reduced majorities: Gaetz’s seat went 57-42 Republican, compared with 66-34 in November; and Waltz’s seat went 57-43 Republican, compared with 66-34 in November. The narrowing of those elections spooked Republican leadership, convincing Trump to withdraw the nomination of Rep. Stefanik to be U.N. Ambassador out of fears the party might not be able to hold an upstate New York district that Trump won 60-39 in November. Two Democrats have also died early in the term and have yet to be replaced, making the current margin 220-213 for the Republicans.

However, Congress has done very little in the first 100 days, reflecting Trump’s modus operandi of simply acting without new Congressional authority, contorting existing law in radical ways. About the only piece of legislation they have enacted was a bill in March to avoid a government shutdown; this required cooperation of several moderate Democratic Senators, including Minority Leader Schumer, who apparently calculated that Trump and DOGE would be able to do even more damage during a government shutdown by selectively deciding which parts of the government to re-open. Still, those Senators’ capitulation has created a lot of ill will on the left wing of the Democratic party, who are now encouraging Rep. Osario-Cortez to consider primarying Schumer in 2026: a poll in early April had AOC ahead of Schumer in a primary race, 55-36.

The Democrats have been strangely silent, for the most part. Sanders and AOC have attracted some large crowds in swing states, and very recently Illinois Governor Pritzker gave a speech calling for mass protests and disruption. In other Democratic news: Buttigieg has declined to run for an open Senate seat in Michigan in 2026, presumably keeping his powder dry for a presidential run in 2028; Maryland Governor Moore recently took himself out of consideration for the 2028 primary; and Kamala has yet to decide whether she will run to replace California Governor Newsom, who is term-limited, in 2026 or instead keep her powder dry for 2028.

Congressional activity is likely to heat up soon as they plot the path towards a new tax bill, with the TCJA’s key provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. But in the meantime, about all Congress has done is rubber stamp Trump’s choices for…

Cabinet. While Gaetz’s bid for Attorney General died on the vine, all of Trump’s other choices for Cabinet were confirmed by the Senate. Which is quite remarkable, given how profoundly unqualified most of them were. Rubio for Secretary of State was the least controversial pick, and indeed he was unanimously approved. Also comparatively uncontroversial was hedge fund titan Scott Bessent’s nomination as Treasury Secretary, making him only the 2nd openly gay Cabinet member (after Buttigieg).

But after that the quality of key nominees was dismal: RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services (with Dr. Oz as head of CMS), former Florida AG Pam Bondi for Attorney General, Kash Patel for FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Kristi Noem for Director of Homeland Security, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary. Hegseth attracted opposition from not only Collins and Murkowski, but also McConnell (who has since indicated he will not run for re-election in 2026); however Vance provided the tie-breaking vote. The fact that Senator Joni Ernst, the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate, was willing to support a nominee who (in addition to being unqualified) firmly believes that women should not serve in combat roles is indicative of the lock that Trump — and Musk or, more accurately, the fear of Musk’s money being thrown at a primary challenger — has on today’s Republican party.

So far the Cabinet has been holding together, in spite of…

Signalgate. In one of the craziest political scandals of all time, in early March NSA Waltz accidentally invited journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the Signal app, in which VP Vance and several Cabinet members were openly discussing plans to bomb targets in Yemen using non-government communication channels. Goldberg originally was coy about the details shared on the chat but, after the administration denied that classified information was transmitted, shared his receipts. In particular, Secretary Hegseth was very open on the Signal chat about the specific timing of when and how attacks would occur, a couple of hours in advance.

Interestingly, the Signal chat was set up to disappear after a certain interval, raising the very likely prospect that administration officials are routinely communicating on Signal as a means of avoiding record-retention statutes. It is rich to see this type of scandal occurring in the administration of the man who rode a scandal involving Hillary’s email server to the White House in the waning days of the 2016 campaign.

Of course Trump, in his usual fashion, refused to admit that anything was wrong here. Having said that, Hegseth may yet find himself without a job; and within the time that I’ve been drafting this post, it has been announced that Waltz is leaving the NSA post to replace Stefanik as the nominee to be U.N. Ambassador. Which brings us to…

Foreign Policy. Oh, boy.

Trump had said during the campaign that he would bring the Russo-Ukraine War to end “on day one”. That hasn’t happened. What has happened, however, is the U.S. effectively taking Russia’s side with respect to the origins of the conflict and the conditions for peace, most recently with the suggestion that Ukraine will need to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea as part of a peace deal. While NATO still exists in name, the U.S. is widely seen by Europe as having in effect walked away from the aims of the coalition, unwinding eight decades of foreign policy in a matter of weeks. This has created considerable re-thinking of priorities within the European Union.

But that’s far from the only major foreign policy development of the Trump turn. During the interregnum, Trump started making repeated comments about several foreign policy issues that were not mentioned at all during the presidential campaign: re-asserting U.S. authority over the Panama Canal; annexing Greenland; renaming the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America; and, to my horror, annexing Canada. The latter issue started with repeated social media references by Trump to “Governor” Trudeau and calling Canada the “51st State”. However as time marched on, these references felt less like Trump’s trademark namecalling and more like the vanguard of a new and aggressive attitude towards the northern neighbor.

The crisis with Canada started in earnest shortly after the inauguration when Trump initiated a trade war with both Canada and Mexico, violating the terms of the USMCA trade agreement that he himself instigated and signed during his first presidential term. The new trade war exploited Presidential powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and as such Trump needed to pretextually create an emergency with Canada, which he did by citing “sustained influx of illicit opioids and other drugs at the Canadian border.” This declaration flew in the face of data indicating that only a miniscule fraction of fentanyl enters the U.S. via Canada, and more actually flows the other way.

The poisoning by Trump of U.S.-Canada relations has had an immediate and profound effect north of the border, not just with respect to Canadian attitudes towards the U.S., but also with respect to domestic politics. At the beginning of the year, it seemed virtually certain that Pierre Polievre’s Conservatives would soundly defeat Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in a federal election to take place sometime in 2025. Instead, Trudeau resigned and was replaced by former central banker Mark Carney, who led the Liberals to victory in a federal election last week, with Polievre (a MAGA wannabe) losing his own seat.

But the trade wars continue, not just with the nation’s nearest neighbors but via…

Global Tariffs. During the campaign Trump repeatedly talked about how “tariffs” was his favorite word in the English language, and harkened back to the McKinley administration. With the Mexico-Canada trade war as a prelude, Trump announced that April 2nd would be “liberation day”, in which he imposed a new tariff regime to restore American greatness. The resulting tariffs, which were in full effect only temporarily, increased average tariff levels tenfold over what had been seen in recent years and to levels higher than those that pertained under the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff bill in the Hoover administration, back when international trade represented only 3% of GDP instead of today’s 11%.

The stock market and bond market both went ballistic, leading Trump to eventually put a pause on many but not all of the new tariffs. In recent days the stock market has recovered all of the considerable ground lost during the chaotic early days of April; but policy uncertainty remains immense, and the ultimate impact on the economy is extremely murky but unlikely to be a net positive.

You might ask yourself, doesn’t our Constitution specify that Congress is in charge of tariff policy? Yes, which brings us to…

Presidential Maximalism, Retribution, and Lawlessness. Trump has taken a strongman approach to governing, with vast numbers of executive orders. Some of them, like declaring an end to birthright citizenship, are in direct tension with the Constitution and settled SCOTUS case law. Others, like the Gulf of America renaming, or a very recent order that Alcatraz be re-opened as a prison, are pretty silly in the grand scheme of things.

Many others reflect Trump’s campaign vow to take retribution on his perceived opponents. This now includes a number of major law firms targeted by specific executive orders, some of which have bent the knee, others of which are suing. It also includes many major universities, with Trump having cut off federal funding to Columbia and Harvard on grounds of “anti-semitism”. Columbia bent the knee; Harvard sued. Very recently, Trump has ordered the IRS to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

But many of the Trump administration’s actions are rooted in a hyper-aggressive use of authority granted to the President under existing statutes. I referred above to the contrivance of a “national emergency” involving the Canadian border in order to invoke authorities under the IEEPA, to launch the trade way with Canada. Another important example involves the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, used to justify some of Trump’s actions in the area of…

Immigration Policy. This was obviously a key issue in the campaign. A lot has been happening here, including the secret revocation of student visas for students with pro-Palestinian views (using authority granted to the Secretary of State to declare that it would be contrary to foreign policy interests for an individual to be allowed into the country), followed by ICE agents making raids to pick up people for “overstaying their visa” when neither they nor their university had knowledge that the visas had been revoked.

A main flashpoint involves the deportation of various individuals to, among other places, a notorious El Salvadoran prison, without access to due process. (I won’t get into the Abrego Garcia case in detail here, but I imagine it will come up in the sequel.) Among other things, Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to declare that a Venezuelan gang named Tren de Aragua has “invaded” the U.S., and then uses that declared “invasion” as justification for deporting suspected TdA members without due process. Vast numbers of cases are working their way through the legal system, and Trump has recently made comments to the effect that he doesn’t believe these people ought to be entitled to due process.

The main concern the Trump approach is raising in many quarters boils down to, what is the limit? If due process does not hold here, then what due process would be afforded if Trump were to, mistakenly or intentionally, deport a permanent resident or even a citizen to an El Salvadoran prison? If Trump is willing to revoke student visas in secret, could he be stopped from revoking previous naturalizations? Already there have been reports of situations where a migrant mother was summoned to meet with government officials and was specifically told to bring her citizen children with her, and then mother and children were removed from the country without being afforded the opportunity to have the children remain in the U.S. with relatives.

As Jack McCoy said to SCOTUS long ago in an episode of Law & Order: “Man has only those rights that he can defend. Only those rights.”

Lastly, we also have a vast aura of…

Corruption. It’s hard to know where to start here.

There was the presidential inauguration, in which Trump raised far more money than had ever been raised before, and where it’s unclear where much of that money ultimately went. It was telling that our oligarch class – Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, etc. – had better seats at the inauguration than most Republican politicians.

There’s Musk’s role in DOGE, where not only did he not make any pretense to avoid conflicts with his business interests, but arguably he advanced his business interests in many ways via the actions he spearheaded.

There’s Trump’s approach to crypto (de)regulation, coinciding with the launch of various Trump crypto ventures, which on paper have reportedly increased his family’s wealth by $2.9 billion in the last few months. (Emoluments clause? What emoluments clause?)

There’s Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, an example of which is the DOJ’s action to dismiss corruption charges against NYC Mayor Adams. This is widely believed to have been a quid pro quo to get Adams’ cooperation with Trump’s immigration policy. Several DOJ prosecutors resigned over the matter. Whereas originally the DOJ was holding the possibility of reinstating the charges over Adams’ head, a judge ruled that the case needed to be dismissed with prejudice instead, so that the threat of renewed prosecution could not be used by the federal government as leverage over Adams.

There’s Trump’s use of the pardon power. He pardoned the creator of ‘dark web’ marketplace Silk Road who was serving life without parole, a cause celebre among libertarians; he pardoned former Illinois Governor Blagojevich, whose sentence he had commuted during his first term; he pardoned the former CEO of electric truck company Nikola, who had donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign; he commuted the sentence of former Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson while he was en route to start a 10-year sentence for fraud. In short, he has taken aggressive action to unwind previous DOJ actions to combat political corruption and white-collar crime. (And, of course, he issued a blanket pardon to all of the January 6th rioters.)

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In short, times are not good. Despite Trump’s frequent disavowals of “Project 2025” during the campaign, a whole lot has happened so far that is straight of the Project 2025 playbook. From my perspective, the damage done so far to America’s standing in the world appears irreparable, and the damage done domestically to the rule of law and the functioning of good government is likely to take decades to repair, as a best case. And that’s presuming that the judiciary can and will ultimately remediate much of the damage, and that we will continue to have free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028 with the electorate repudiating Trump’s movement; but there is considerable risk that won’t happen.

I should add that there are certain of Trump’s aims to which I am not ideologically opposed: Immigration policy and enforcement in the U.S. needs improvement, and I can see the appeal of a less globalist approach to trade. Once can also argue, reasonably, that the federal government does too many things and some of them ought to be re-thought. (I tend to take the flip side of that coin myself, namely that we leave far too much to the vagaries of the private sector; but, there are arguments to be had here.) However, given his nature Trump is an incredibly imperfect vehicle through which to try and address any of these complex and nuanced issues. Which leaves us, all too predictably, with chaos.