'Shock and awe': Trump moves faster than last time to impose agenda
He's already implemented, or started implementing, about two-thirds of his more contentious campaign promises
If you're surprised by some of Donald Trump's first moves as president, you shouldn't be. He's been promising these policies for two years.
In fact, to some analysts of U.S. presidential power, the most striking thing about this newest iteration of Trump is something that was lacking in version 1.0: He's really executing his plans.
This time, he's surrounded by more experienced staff than the rag-tag gaggle of advisers and relatives he brought to Washington in 2017.
"The surprise is how organized he is," said Harold Krent, a professor and former dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law. He's also an author and expert on presidential power who served briefly in the Biden White House.
"It's kind of like a little bit of shock and awe."
Another analyst of presidential power who has written extensively about its increasingly imperial nature, Mitchel Sollenberger at the University of Michigan, says Trump has "kind of hit the ground running."
Long-standing goals
Virtually all the things he's done were spelled out nearly two years ago, as Trump's platform, on his campaign website.
This wasn't Project 2025. For all the campaign chatter about that 900-page series of white papers written by Trump allies, his official website had these policies listed in black and white, right there in bullet form.
CBC News identified his more notable policies at the time. It's all there: Ending birthright citizenship. Cancelling federal support for racial equity and transgender people. Stripping job protections from civil servants. Refusing to spend sums approved by Congress. Trade tariffs. Leaving the Paris climate accord. Militarizing the southern border. Pardons for supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has now carried out, or begun carrying out, approximately two-thirds of the items on CBC's list in just over a week.
In a head-spinning succession of executive orders, he's been testing the limits of presidential powers — pushing into grey areas and into what some call unconstitutional no-go zones.
"In some ways he is doing what he said he would do on the campaign," said Erin Corcoran, an expert on immigration law and policy at the University of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs.
"But it is much more sweeping and pushing the outer limits — even overstepping the outer limits — of the executive branch if you compare back to what he did in his first presidency."
Freeze on federal grants
Much of this will be litigated in court: There are already lawsuits, and already two judges have temporarily paused his changes to citizenship qualifications and his plan to freeze federal grants.
Several presidential scholars mentioned his change to birthright citizenship when asked which of Trump's early moves might be unlawful. Trump issued an executive order last week declaring, among other things, that children born to parents who are in the U.S. illegally do not automatically become citizens.
It's an area of broad consensus that Trump's birthright effort is likely doomed as a radical attempt to overturn the 157-year-old 14th Amendment.
There's less consensus about other moves. For example, his freeze on federal grants, which has caused panic for its potential impact on patients, students, veterans, researchers and recipients of aid programs.
Some scholars call the freeze unlawful for a variety of reasons: as an unconstitutional violation of Congress's control over spending; that it breaks the 1974 Impoundment Control Act; and contradicts longstanding White House legal interpretation.
Team Trump's retort was: It's just a pause, a delay in delivering spending.
"That's a kind of grey area," Krent said.
Then, amid a furor, just before Tuesday's court intervention, the White House swiftly undid some of the freeze, saying funding will proceed for a string of programs including those affecting students and health care.
Trump argues that he's not actually cancelling any spending, just slow-walking it as he plans his next move: asking Congress to cancel some of that spending in an upcoming budget bill, and fighting the 1974 law in court, as he promised to do two years ago.
Such court decisions may be the only institutional check on Trump. There's no sign that Trump faces any meaningful resistance from the Republicans who control Congress.
"In some areas, such as deportations or tariffs, quick presidential action can and probably will succeed," said Gerard Magliocca, a constitutional law professor at Indiana University.
"Many of the executive orders, though, will not be sustained by the courts because they lack any foundation in law."
What about Canada, Greenland and Panama?
There is one area where Trump's behaviour is truly unexpected. Alas, it involves Canada — along with a couple of other countries whose sovereignty he's questioned.
There was no inkling during the election campaign that he would propose statehood for Canada and reclaiming the Panama Canal, although he did express an appetite for annexing Greenland during his first presidency.
So what's Trump's goal with Canada?
"I have no idea," said Barry Posen, a prominent scholar of U.S. international strategy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says he's been trying to figure out Trump's endgame with this foreign policy rhetoric.
There's always the possibility that Trump truly relishes a return to the might-makes-right international order that predates the Second World War — where, if a superpower wants something from Greenland, it takes Greenland.
"He's expressing solutions that are fundamentally illiberal. They're old-fashioned," Posen said.
But it's possible Trump is trying something else: negotiation, albeit by means more typical of a shady New York real-estate deal than among NATO allies.
Posen says there are broad concerns in the U.S. involving Greenland, Panama and Canada, and it's not just Trump, nor just Republicans, who hold them.
With Greenland, it's the attraction as a hub for radar, anti-submarine systems, minerals and navigation. With the Panama Canal, it's about countering Chinese maritime presence in the Americas. With Canada, it's about Ottawa's perceived disinterest in matters of continental security.
It's plausible that Trump is trying to scare everyone into more mundane U.S. foreign policy wins, Posen says, like making a military arrangement with Denmark about Greenland.
"He likes to start the negotiation with a very strong hand. So if you want NATO to increase defence spending by three per cent, ask for five. If you want privileged access to Greenland, ask to own it," Posen said.
"So he goes to Europe and, you know, he's welcomed like the king he is and his ring is kissed and gifts are offered and it's all done on television and it looks great for his constituents at home.… He needs the show, right? So it's a bargaining position."
But again, Posen admits he's still trying to figure out Trump's plan.
All that expansionist rhetoric is, at this point, only that — rhetoric. The concrete policies Trump has actually executed will only surprise anyone who failed to pay attention over the last two years.
"There's a new sheriff in town," Posen said. "And that sheriff is intent on not merely imposing his authority as the presidency is understood — but in increasing his authority as he understands the presidency.… He's pushing as hard as he can."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
