With a blur of activity, Trump 2.0 makes his priorities and governing style quite clear

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In his first three weeks as president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged Americans to abjure “fear itself,” issued a proclamation calling for a bank holiday, held his first fireside chat, urged Congress to begin work on a full repeal of Prohibition, took a preliminary step by legalizing the sale of beer and wine and, finally, cut spending by US$243-million (almost US$6-billion today) by trimming some federal salaries.

In his first three weeks as president, Ronald Reagan greeted the newly freed hostages from Iran, established a presidential task force on regulatory relief and delivered a nationwide address in which he told television viewers, “I regret to say that we’re in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression.”

In his first three weeks as President, Donald Trump kicked off a flurry of activity far greater than what FDR or Mr. Reagan managed to do.

In a remarkable display of indefatigability, several elements of the new Trump administration and the emerging style of Trump 2.0 are evident:

• A determination to broaden executive authority. All recent presidents have used executive orders to bypass Congress. Mr. Reagan issued 381 in his two terms, Bill Clinton 364 and Barack Obama 277. Mr. Trump issued 54 in less than three weeks. At that rate – there is no guarantee, of course, that the President will continue that pace – he will surpass Mr. Reagan’s entire first-term tally (213) by early April.
• A willingness to defy constitutional and legal barriers. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld congressional legislation banning TikTok until its Chinese owner sells it, but Mr. Trump ordered that the ban not be enforced. He dismissed 18 inspectors-general from the federal work force despite a requirement that he provide Congress with 30 days’ notice and a “substantive rationale” for removing them. His gutting of the foreign-aid agency and firing of members of both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and National Labor Relations Boards may be illegal if not unconstitutional. In a ruling Thursday in Seattle, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said that “to our President, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals” and is “something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.”
• A vision of American geographical expansionism. This, along with tariffs, is at the heart of the President’s bromance with William McKinley, who was president from 1897 to 1901, during which time the U.S. annexed Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that Mr. Trump truly does want to annex Canada, almost no one in the United States takes that notion seriously. But in his inaugural address, the President said, “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation – one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” His vision clearly involves retaking the Panama Canal. He has his eyes on Greenland. Like Canadians, both Panamanians and Greenlanders find Mr. Trump’s remarks repugnant.
• A contempt for established ways of governing and for the prerogatives of Congress. Mr. Trump did not mention the word “Congress” once during his inaugural address and, with his early actions, has acted without congressional approbation. Ordinarily members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are jealous of their prerogatives; even during Democratic control of both houses of Congress and the White House during the administration of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981), the mandarins of Congress asserted their rights, sometimes stymying the President, often holding Mr. Carter in bitter contempt. In these first three weeks, Democrats in Congress have been criticized by liberals for their feckless response to Mr. Trump.
• A hostility to federal employees. Presidents are always astonished by the way long-time federal employees, especially in the State Department, have asserted direct opposition to the desires of the White House. The so-called Arabists in the State and Defence departments, for example, fought Harry Truman’s desire for swift diplomatic recognition of the new state of Israel. In his first administration, Mr. Trump, who had vowed to “drain the swamp,” encountered similar resistance. He has vowed to proscribe a repeat of this phenomenon and has set in motion wholesale firings in many areas of the government, especially the Justice Department, where those who worked on cases against him have been summarily fired. A federal judge in Massachusetts intervened Thursday with a temporary block on a plan to offer buyouts to career bureaucrats.
• A unilateralism in foreign affairs and a withdrawal from international organizations and agreements. Mr. Trump wants other NATO countries to pay their fair share of the alliance, for example, but is reluctant to engage in collective security. The near-united NATO front on assisting Ukraine may be shattered if some elements of the Trump coalition, especially the strain led by Vice-President JD Vance, prevail in internal administration debate over continuing American aid in the war against Russia. Separately, Mr. Trump swiftly withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization and began the process of pulling the country from the Paris Agreement to fight climate change.
• A consolidation of the MAGA movement and the Republican Party. Though the belief that Mr. Trump has remade the GOP in his own image was common only a few months ago, the notion was theoretical until the November election. Had he lost, the melding of his movement and the party would not have been assured. Now it is. When historians write the story of Mr. Trump’s presidencies, they may identify two developments as the moments that melding was sealed. The first was when Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a survivor of sexual assault, overcame her skepticism of the nomination as defence secretary of Pete Hegseth, who battled allegations of sexual misconduct. The second came this week, when Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who supports vaccination, indicated he would back Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to be secretary of health and human services.
• A keenness to create new challenges to settled legal matters. Best example: the Constitution makes clear, in the words of the 14th Amendment, that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The Supreme Court has consistently agreed with the principle of birthright citizenship. Even so, Mr. Trump has made an attack on that principle part of his anti-migrant campaign and wants to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to migrant parents. Two federal judges have halted his efforts, and a fresh Supreme Court test is inevitable.
• A willingness, even an eagerness, to press ahead despite criticism from the mainstream media and the legal establishment, which ordinarily act as a break on presidential adventurism. All presidents dislike the press, but none with the venom and persistence of Mr. Trump, who also regularly dismisses the critiques of legal experts as fussy obstructionists. “This is a president, and a person, who has repeatedly shown himself to be unbothered by adverse legal rulings and negative headlines,” said Jon Michaels, a constitutional law expert at UCLA. “He also isn’t staking his presidency or his first 100 days on any one specific plan or proposal but rather pushing many, many issues at once, so he may well be perfectly happy to lose a few, maybe a lot, if and when the courts provide the pushback many hope will be forthcoming.”