We are officially one month into Donald Trump’s second presidential term and there has been no shortage of news coming out of the White House. Since his inauguration, we’ve been met with a flood of executive orders — some already proving consequential and some possibly unconstitutional. The constant flurry of news has made it hard for many of us to determine where to place our focus.
In today’s Vox Explainer, senior editor Patrick Reis and senior reporter Christian Paz are here to break it all down with a discussion about Trump’s first month in office and what’s on their radar looking ahead.
Patrick Reis: Good morning, Christian. This week, we’ll hit one month of Trump 2.0. What do you think the biggest storylines are so far? What do you think really matters?
Christian Paz: Good morning! Another chilly day in the imperial core. I can’t believe it’s already been a month. So much has happened — and I think that’s one meta storyline from the last few weeks. Donald Trump has governed with shock and awe so far, inundating the public, the press, and his opposition with just so much of substance and of bluster. The quick rise of Elon Musk, and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has to be one of the defining storylines of this presidency. I don’t think many people could have expected just how quickly his team would be able to infiltrate and audit the executive branch, but it happened so quickly.
And I think it really matters that we’re seeing how easy it is to destroy and tear apart bureaucracy — which to be sure, there are merits for making more efficient, but there are appropriate mechanisms and ways to make that happen — without us knowing exactly what’s being broken, how irreversible it is, and who and what will be damaged or impacted as a result of this smashing about. I was legitimately just reading this tweet from the econ writer Kyla Scanlon: Mass firings, and breaking the federal bureaucracy, will have long-term consequences.
Patrick Reis: It does feel like we’re in the middle of a grand national experiment, where the research question is: How much government do we need? Elon’s DOGE team is the researcher. We’re all the guinea pigs.
Christian Paz: Oh, that’s grim.
Patrick Reis: But basically, it seems like the approach is to cut back on a lot of core areas, and then find out if there are any consequences.
Christian Paz: Kind of like turning switches on and off.
Patrick Reis: I saw a quote somewhere that said something like, “They’re pulling the lever and have no idea what’s on the other side.”
Christian Paz: Truly a government as a tech startup. The alternative was a blanket approach, as when the OMB essentially ordered a government spending freeze, but clearly people saw too much risk (putting aside the question of if it was even legal). I do think there are interesting follow-up threads here, though. How many of those DOGE audits and “investigations” into how money is being spent and those working in the government were fed and and reinforced through social media?
Patrick Reis: Careful, you’ll get yourself a story assignment. Okay, so we have DOGE and the grand national experiment. What else do you think matters?
Christian Paz: Many of these attempts to purge the government and freeze spending have been reined in a bit by the courts. There are some guardrails in place, but they aren’t necessarily going to hold forever.
And on that front, I think the response to these Trump and Musk actions has been another worthwhile story to follow — not just the protests, or lack thereof, or the congressional democratic response, but both popular opinion and institutions. The courts have been doing their jobs, there is legal resistance in the works, Democrats don’t have a ton of power, but they did do some protesting, and through it all, public opinion hasn’t drastically swung away from Trump.
Patrick Reis: I do wonder if the public is in “wait and see” mode. There’s so much happening. I imagine a lot of people are still trying to figure out what that is before deciding what they think about it.
Christian Paz: Yeah, I think that’s right. There’s uncertainty about just how much some of the other things he promised to do are going to play out. The news about tariffs has been pretty noisy; I wonder if Americans know if there are currently tariffs in place — if the ones he has threatened to impose on Canada, Mexico, and Europe have even happened. I wonder if Americans know what the pace of deportations is and the status of Trump’s promise of mass deportations. For example, do people know if the nation is using Guantánamo for holding undocumented people in the process of being deported?
Patrick Reis: To me, overarching all of this, are two big questions:
1) The Trump administration is attempting to greatly expand the president’s power, both by expanding the reach of the executive branch into territories that the Constitution reserves for Congress, and by enhancing the president’s control of the executive branch. Will the courts let them do it? Obviously, that’s not a binary question — sometimes the courts will say yes, sometimes they’ll say no. But the ratio of nos to yeses has massive implications for the shape of our government.
2) Perhaps even bigger: Will the administration abide by the courts? So far, they’re not openly defying rulings, though they keep getting dinged in court for limited compliance. But I think the [redacted] will hit the fan if Trump or his team openly say: “No, we won’t comply.” Our colleague Andrew Prokop pointed out that they’re appealing right now, rather than outright defying rulings, but then you have Trump tweeting “he who saves this country does not violate any law,” and that doesn’t make me super comfortable.
Christian Paz: I mean, especially to your second point, the White House and Trump’s surrogates keep dropping hints that they don’t believe they should be bound by “activist judges” or “the law;” posting Napoleon-esque quotes and framing the president’s mugshot. It’s kind of edgelord behavior. The number of times the nickname “big balls” has been dropped in Slack …
Patrick Reis: I realize that posting on Bluesky that if you’re “surprised” by anything invites a wave of “how could you not see this coming?” scolds, but … what has surprised you so far?
Christian Paz: Haha, that’s part of why I’m not really on Bluesky, but maybe I should spend more time there. What’s surprised me so far?
I’ve been surprised by the slow response of Democrats to Trump so far, and how unorganized they seem. But even more surprising to me has been how little resistance moderate Republicans have put up, especially in the Senate, to Trump’s nominees. I did not expect Joni Ernst, for example, to vote for Pete Hegseth, or for Bill Hagerty to vote for RFK Jr. I did not expect Tulsi Gabbard to get the support of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. And Mitch McConnell, who paved the way for a lot of the current GOP’s state, has emerged as a lone Republican “no” vote to a few of these nominees.
Patrick Reis: I have heard from a lot of readers wondering, “What’s going on with the Democrats?!” I often wish I had a better reply. I think it’s a reflection of deeper fissures. To respond to Trump as a united party, it really helps to have a shared ideology and a consistent vision for what you’d like to do next. After their election losses, Dems are still sorting that out. So I think it’s not just that they’ve been caught flat-footed, but rather that they’re more paralyzed by a search for answers.
Christian Paz: I’m also thinking about how this first Trump month is also playing out very interestingly on some of the manosphere podcasts and alternative media I’m tracking. I hear a lot of positive discussions about DOGE — the purging of the executive branch — but some of the wackier Trump actions aren’t really going over too well with some of these folks. There’s actual concern about free speech and anti-conservative tone policing when it comes to things like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, for example, and the closeness of the White House to Big Tech companies.
Patrick Reis: This is really interesting. How will we know if the Trump coalition is falling apart?
Christian Paz: This is my grand project for the next three months. I started out wondering after November if the thinkers who argued that a multiracial, working-class MAGA majority would arise were right, and that it could be maintained. Then I got to thinking, “How durable will this new Trump/MAGA coalition be?” but maybe the approach is, “Can we look for signs or clues that the coalition is falling apart?” Because it does not seem to me like the message of 2024 makes for a lasting uniting ideology.
Patrick Reis: That’s a great line of coverage. I think I speak for readers when I say that I’m looking forward to learning more. Tell me more about it not lasting.
Christian Paz: Well, the basic MAGA line of 2024 was to fundamentally call for a “change,” but not everyone in that coalition agreed on how to do it. There’s some debate over whether the nation was fundamentally more conservative than it was four or eight years ago, and that might have tied the members of that coalition together. But it’s also not clear that everything Trump is pursuing now is exactly what all parts of that coalition really wanted.
I think that’s why the line of “nobody elected Musk” might actually be more compelling of an attack on Trump than we might expect. Just a petite thought. I think I’d need to write a few pieces to try to explain that in full depth. I fear I’ve assigned myself some stories.
Patrick Reis: I fear for you as well. Before we go, what should readers be watching for in the weeks ahead?
Christian Paz: I think they should do their best to keep up with what changes begin to happen at some departments that could have impacts on everyday lives: HHS, the Department of Education and student loan repayment plans, and potentially what happens to Medicare and Medicaid.
Congress is about to begin more serious negotiations over spending and tax cuts, and those cuts will have to be paid for somehow.
Patrick Reis: Ah, yes — Congress, the coequal branch of government.
Christian Paz: A lot of that might get messy, so it would help to read about it in condensed form through a newsletter that gives you what you need to know, and lets you log off …
Patrick Reis: Logoff you say?
