WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump approaches the first-month mark in his second term, he has moved with dizzying speed and blunt force to reorder American social and political norms and the economy while redefining the U.S. role in the world.
At the same time, he has empowered Elon Musk, an unelected, South African-born billionaire, to help engineer the firing of thousands of federal employees and potentially shutter entire agencies created by Congress.
Those efforts have largely overshadowed Trump’s crackdowns on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, and his efforts to remake social policy by wiping out diversity, equity and inclusion programs and rolling back transgender rights.
The president has also imposed scores of new tariffs against U.S. trade partners and threatened more, even as economists warn that will pass costs on to U.S. consumers and feed inflation.
Mass federal firings begin
The Trump administration fired thousands of workers who were still in probationary periods common among new hires. Some had less than an hour to leave their offices.
Those potentially losing jobs include medical scientists, energy infrastructure specialists, foreign service employees, FBI agents, prosecutors, educational and farming data experts, overseas aid workers and even human resources personnel who would otherwise have to manage the dismissals.
At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created to protect the public after the 2008 financial crisis, employees say the administration not only wants to cut nearly the entire workforce but also erase all its data from the past 12 years. The administration agreed to pause any further dismantling of the agency until March 3, under a judge’s order.
While Trump promised to turn Washington upside down, his moves could have far-reaching implications for thousands of federal employees around the country and drive up the unemployment rate if large numbers of layoffs happen at once.
Legal challenges mount
Court challenges to Trump’s policies started on Inauguration Day and have continued at a furious pace since Jan. 20. The administration is facing some 70 lawsuits nationwide challenging his executive orders and moves to downsize the federal government.
The Republican-controlled Congress is putting up little resistance, so the court system is ground zero for pushback. Judges have issued more than a dozen orders at least temporarily blocking aspects of Trump’s agenda, ranging from an executive order to end U.S. citizenship extended automatically to people born in this country to giving Musk’s team access to sensitive federal data.
While many of those judges were nominated by Democratic presidents, Trump has gotten unfavorable rulings from judges picked by Republican presidents, too. Trump suggested he could target the judiciary, saying, “Maybe we have to look at the judges.” The administration has said in the meantime that it will appeal, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt railed against the orders slowing the president’s agenda, calling each “an abuse of the rule of law.”
The administration has notched a few wins, too, most significantly when a judge allowed it to move forward with a deferred resignation program spearheaded by Musk.
