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How Trump’s Second Term Is Already Different From His First

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How Trump’s Second Term Is Already Different From His First

During his Inaugural Address on Monday, President Trump made a point of telling the country that he had learned “a lot” over the past eight years.

The four and a half days since have revealed what he meant.

Gone are the Washington outsiders who took the reins of government in 2017 and struggled to get its wheels turning. Instead, we’ve seen a hailstorm of action that reflects how Trump’s advisers have become masters of the government bureaucracy they have promised to upend.

My colleague Charlie Savage has covered law, government and the way presidents use their power for more than two decades. He reported extensively on the first Trump administration as well as on Trump’s plans for his second, and I asked him to talk us through just how much is different this time around — and what that could mean for the presidency to come.

Our conversation was condensed and edited for clarity.

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JB: You covered the first Trump administration, and now you’ve covered the first week of the second one. What was different in the opening days of Trump II, compared with Trump I?

CS: The opening of the first Trump administration was chaotic and dysfunctional. Trump had little support from the Republican establishment during the 2016 campaign. He and many of the officials he gathered around him when he took office simply did not know what they were doing at first — and it showed. Trump issued only four executive orders in his first five days in office in 2017. Even when the pace later picked up, many of his early directives were effectively press releases that did not do much of substance, or were so poorly developed that it was a no-brainer for courts to block them.

By contrast, the second Trump administration has begun with a blizzard of consequential executive orders. A few are vague nothing-burgers — like ordering the government to think about ways to reduce prices — but most are very substantive. Many of his policy changes will strike many people as extreme. Some, as I wrote this week, pushed at the limits of legitimate executive power and may not survive court challenges. One about ending birthright citizenship has already been blocked for now. But inarguably, Trump is moving much more quickly to achieve his goals.

This is partly because he and his advisers learned a lot about how government works over the course of his first term. And partly because, over the past eight years, Trumpism has become the conservative establishment, and policy think tanks in Washington are now aligned with and helping him — like Project 2025.

To be sure, things are still bumpy, but Trump’s advisers have been carefully planning out this takeover.

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What, specifically, does it seem like Trump — or the people around him — have learned since 2017? Have they figured out how to be bureaucrats?

Here’s one example of how they are operating more shrewdly. One of the executive orders that got less attention this week was about foreign visitors to the United States. It has a section that requires the government to take two months to study vetting and screening procedures in countries around the world, and then to deliver a report identifying which are so deficient as to supposedly warrant banning entry to the United States by any citizens of those countries.

It appears that the administration is planting a seed to later revive Trump’s controversial ban on travel by people from several predominantly Muslim countries. Last time, he abruptly imposed that policy days after taking office without careful planning, and the courts immediately blocked it. Making a show of having studied the issue first may make it easier to defend a new travel ban in court.

Who has been most responsible for putting these changes into practice?

One person who seems to have learned a lot is Stephen Miller, a top domestic policy adviser to Trump who has long been an architect of his immigration crackdown policies. He was a Senate aide before 2017, and learned over the course of Trump’s first term how to avoid pitfalls and get things done within the executive branch bureaucracy. He spent the four years out of office cultivating donors and relationships, both on Capitol Hill and with lawyers and others now going into the administration. He also helped get specific allies into key positions around the new administration, positioning them to keep the gears of bureaucracy turning the way he wants them to.

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Trump clearly wanted to put a stamp on the first week of the presidency. But, in a way, is it actually Miller’s imprint that we are seeing, given how much preparation and nuts-and-bolts strategizing he has put into this opening salvo?

No president personally performs the nuts-and-bolts work of drafting the executive orders and proclamations that he signs. That said, I have no doubt that Miller played a major role in developing the cluster of immigration actions we saw this week. He had previewed a lot of those very steps back in the fall of 2023, when I and my colleagues Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman were working on a series about the policy stakes of a potential return to power by Trump.

Plenty of other people were heavily involved, too. For example, Russell Vought, who was Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget in his first term and is set to reprise that role, has been very interested in other policy themes we have seen reflected in these early orders, such as efforts to impose tighter political control over the federal bureaucracy. At Project 2025, Vought was in charge of drafting executive orders that Trump could consider issuing early on if he got back into power. Of course, during the campaign Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025; we don’t know yet whether or which of these early orders trace back to that effort.

Taken together, what does Trump’s first week in office tell us about how he now views power, and about his hold on the levers of government? What might it tell us about how he’ll approach the next four years?

Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, and that party controls Congress, so he has no fear of impeachment. He cannot run for president again, so he has no fear of rejection by voters. He appointed a large number of federal judges during his first term, which means he now faces a federal judiciary that is much more tilted in his favor than when he first took office. He managed to wriggle free from two federal indictments and even survived an assassination attempt. The decision last summer by the six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices to declare a constitutional doctrine of broad immunity for presidents can only be giving him additional confidence.

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Against the backdrop of all that, I think the scope and aggression of his early executive orders and his decision to grant clemency to even those Jan. 6 rioters who violently assaulted police officers are clear signals that he is feeling little constraint.

By now, you’ve seen the gesture made by the world’s richest man during President Trump’s inaugural festivities. You may also have seen his prominent defenders. But my colleague Katrin Bennhold, a former Berlin bureau chief, writes that there was little debate in Germany over the meaning of Musk’s outstretched arm.

In Germany, gestures like the one Musk made are illegal, along with other symbols and slogans from the Nazi era. So for the German establishment, the situation was very clear.

“A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute,” the prominent weekly Die Zeit wrote in an editorial.

“There is no need to make this unnecessarily complicated,” the editorial said. “Anyone on a political stage giving a political speech in front of a partly right-wing extremist audience” — present at the inauguration were several far-right politicians from Germany, Italy, France and Britain — “anyone who raises their right arm in a swinging manner and at an angle several times is doing the Hitler salute.”

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Read more here.

As President Trump traveled to North Carolina and California on Friday, to view damage from Hurricane Helene, in Asheville, N.C., and from the continuing wildfires in Los Angeles, he seemed to demonstrate a tendency I wrote about just a couple of weeks ago: mixing politics into the once politically neutral territory of disasters.

As a candidate, Trump made a series of false claims about the Helene disaster response as he sought to depict the Biden administration’s efforts as hapless. On Friday in Asheville, he said that former President Biden had done a “bad job” and that he was mulling shuttering FEMA altogether. He has previously threatened to withhold disaster aid to California, and he said today that he wanted to secure new voter ID laws and new water management policies while he was there.

California officials are already worried about how he might treat their state.

“He’s infected much of the Republican Party in Washington to view us not as the United States of America but as red states and blue states,” Senator Adam Schiff, the California Democrat, told my colleague Annie Karni. “We’re going to have to deal with that.”

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Los Angeles Faces Risk of Mudslides With the Arrival of Rain

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Los Angeles Faces Risk of Mudslides With the Arrival of Rain

The Santa Ana winds that have fueled wildfires for weeks in Southern California finally stopped blowing on Friday, and an unusually long period of dry weather was on track to end in Los Angeles County as a cold storm approached on Saturday.

The system was expected to deliver light to moderate rain that will fall intermittently Saturday night through Monday. The weather will give the arid landscape and withered vegetation a much-needed soaking and benefit firefighting crews.

Still, the forecast showed a small risk that bursts of heavy rain could cause flash floods and mudslides around areas of Los Angeles County recently scarred by wildfires, including the northwest (Hughes fire), east (Bridge fire), southwest (Franklin and Palisades fires) and especially the central area where the Eaton fire burned.

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for those areas from 10 a.m. Sunday to 4 p.m. Monday, when there is the highest chance for rain and risk for thunderstorms.

Kristan Lund, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, called flooding the worst-case scenario for the conditions in Los Angeles, where there is up to a 20 percent chance that debris flows could damage roads and structures.

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“What we’re telling people is to avoid the area during the watch period,” Ms. Lund said. “Use sandbags to protect your property, and if residents decide to stay, make sure to stock up on supplies in case road access is blocked.”

The Los Angeles area has seen its driest start to the rainy season on record and has not measured significant rainfall since last spring. Since May 1, the Weather Service’s gauge in downtown Los Angeles has measured just a little more than a quarter-inch of rain. This weekend’s expected storm has the potential to bring nearly four times that amount.

The burn scars in Los Angeles County, where trees and brush were devoured by flames, are most likely to benefit from the rain. “If we get gentle rains, it’s going to help make those burn areas recover and re-vegetate,” said Jayme Laber, a hydrologist with the Weather Service.

By midafternoon on Saturday, rain had yet to arrive in Los Angeles County, but the first drops were expected to fall by the evening, with showers increasing Sunday into Monday. Most locations across the county, including downtown Los Angeles, are expected to record up to an inch of rain in the storm.

But isolated showers and thunderstorms could bring rain that falls at three quarters of an inch an hour, and the heavier rains could lead to debris flows Sunday afternoon through Monday afternoon. The thunderstorms could also kick up strong, damaging winds, drop small hail and cause water spouts over the ocean, the Weather Service said.

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The weather is expected to temporarily lower the risk of wildfires, but this one storm won’t fully end it.

“It’s only going to help things out for a couple weeks,” Matt Shameson, a meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service, said of the storm. “If we get another one or two decent systems, that will help us out significantly.”

The good news is that another set of showers could come over the region sometime next week, Mr. Shameson said.

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Japanese investors dump Eurozone bonds at fastest pace in a decade

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Japanese investors dump Eurozone bonds at fastest pace in a decade

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Japanese investors have been selling Eurozone government debt at the fastest pace in more than a decade, with analysts warning that the move by one of the bloc’s cornerstone bondholders could lead to sharp market sell-offs.

Net sales by Japanese investors rose to €41bn in the six months to November — the latest figures to be released — according to data from Japan’s ministry of finance and the Bank of Japan, compiled by Goldman Sachs.

The prospect of higher bond yields at home and political upheaval in Europe — including the collapse of the ruling coalition in Germany leading to elections next month, and turmoil in France which has been operating under an emergency budget law — have accelerated the sales, analysts say. French bonds were the most sold during the period at €26bn.

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The sales add further pressure to indebted European governments already facing a jump in borrowing costs, and highlight how rising Japanese interest rates after years in negative territory are reshaping financial markets around the world.

Japanese investors returning home is a “game changer for Japan and global markets,” said Alain Bokobza, head of global asset allocation at Société Générale.

Although Japanese investors have been net sellers of Eurozone bonds for most of the past few years, the pace has picked up in recent months.

Japanese investment flows have been “a stable source of [European] government bond demand for a long time,” said Tomasz Wieladek, an economist at asset manager T Rowe Price. But markets are now “entering an era of bond vigilance” where “rapid and violent sell-offs” could happen more often.

Gareth Hill, a bond fund manager at Royal London Asset Management, said the scenario had “long been a concern for holders of European government bonds, given the historically high holdings [among] Japanese investors” and could put pressure on the market.

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In addition, soaring costs of hedging against swings in the value of the yen have made overseas debt increasingly unappealing. Despite coming down from a 2022 peak, when hedging costs are accounted for, the 10-year Italian government bond yield for Japanese investors is just over 1 per cent, which is roughly the same as the Japanese 10-year yield, according to Noriatsu Tanji, chief bond strategist of Mizuho Securities in Tokyo. He pointed to regional banks in Japan as being among the main sellers of European debt.

“Japanese investors must be asking themselves quite hard to what extent they should be holding foreign bonds,” said Andres Sanchez Balcazar, head of global bonds at Pictet, Europe’s largest asset manager.

Norinchukin — one of Japan’s largest institutional investors — last year said it planned to offload more than ¥10tn of foreign bonds this financial year. In November, it recorded a loss of around $3bn in the second quarter after realising losses on its large holdings of foreign government bonds.

The pullback by Japanese investors is putting upward pressure on bond yields that have already moved higher since the European Central Bank started to reduce its balance sheet after a vast emergency bond-buying programme during the coronavirus pandemic, said analysts.

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Bar chart of $, tn showing Japan is a huge holder of foreign government debt

France — which has one of Europe’s deepest bond markets and has historically been a favourite among Japanese investors due to the additional yield it offers over benchmark German debt — has seen large Japanese outflows in recent months.

Between June and November, as a political crisis deepened that resulted in the fall of Michel Barnier’s government, Japanese funds’ total outflows reached €26bn, compared with sales of just €4bn in the same period the previous year.

“There is no question that for France the buyer base has changed,” said Seamus Mac Gorain, head of global rates at JPMorgan Asset management.

Over the past 20 years, Japanese investors have become a cornerstone investor in several bond markets as ultra-low yields at home have made foreign investments more attractive, including for big investors such as pension funds who need to buy safe sovereign debt.

Total holdings of foreign bonds by Japanese institutional investors reached $3 trillion at their peak in late 2020, according to IMF.

However, as Japanese investors have started to search for returns at home, their net buying of global debt securities have shrunk to just $15bn in total over the past five years — a far cry from the roughly $500bn in such purchases they made in the previous five years, according to calculations by Alex Etra, a macro strategist at Exante.

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“Whereas Japanese bonds were quite unattractive for domestic investors in the past, they are more attractive now,” said JPMorgan’s Gorain. “That is a structural change.”

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Southern California rain helps firefighters but creates risk of toxic ash runoff

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Southern California rain helps firefighters but creates risk of toxic ash runoff

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After weeks of windy and dry weather, rain has fallen in parched Southern California and is expected to aid firefighters who are mopping up multiple wildfires. But potentially heavy downpours on charred hillsides could bring new troubles such as toxic ash runoff.

Los Angeles County crews spent much of the past week removing vegetation, shoring up slopes and reinforcing roads in devastated areas of the Palisades and Eaton fires, which reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble and ash after breaking out during powerful winds Jan. 7.

Most of the region was forecast to get around an inch (about 2.5 centimeters) of precipitation over several days, but “the threat is high enough to prepare for the worst-case scenario” of localized cloudbursts causing mud and debris to flow down hills, the National Weather Service said on social media.

“So the problem would be if one of those showers happens to park itself over a burn area,” weather service meteorologist Carol Smith said. “That could be enough to create debris flows.”

Rainfall that began late Saturday was expected to increase Sunday and possibly last into early Tuesday, forecasters said. Flood watches were issued for some burn areas, while snow was likely in the mountains.

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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive order last week to expedite cleanup efforts and mitigate the environmental impacts of fire-related pollutants. LA County supervisors also approved an emergency motion to install flood-control infrastructure and expedite and remove sediment in fire-impacted areas.

Fire crews filled sandbags for communities, while county workers installed barriers and cleared drainage pipes and basins.

Officials cautioned that ash in recent burn zones was a toxic mix of incinerated cars, electronics, batteries, building materials, paints, furniture and other household items. It contains pesticides, asbestos, plastics and lead. Residents were urged to wear protective gear while cleaning up.

Concerns about post-fire debris flows have been especially high since 2018, when the town of Montecito, up the coast from LA, was ravaged by mudslides after a downpour hit mountain slopes burned bare by a huge blaze. Hundreds of homes were damaged and 23 people died.

While the impending wet weather ended weeks of dangerous gusts and reduced humidity, several wildfires were still burning Saturday across Southern California. Those included the Palisades and Eaton fires, which killed at least 28 people and destroyed more than 14,000 structures. Containment of the Palisades Fire reached 81% on Saturday and the Eaton Fire was 95% contained.

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In northern Los Angeles County, firefighters made significant progress against the Hughes Fire, which prompted evacuations for tens of thousands of people when it erupted on Wednesday in mountains near Lake Castaic.

In San Diego County, there was still little containment of the Border 2 Fire as it burned through a remote area of the Otay Mountain Wilderness near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The rain was expected to snap a near-record streak of dry weather for Southern California. Much of the region has received less than 5% of the average rainfall for this point in the water year, which began Oct. 1, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Most of Southern California is currently in “extreme drought” or “severe drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

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