So a lot for that lame duck within the White House.
President Donald Trump is doubling down on retribution, global domination and relentless home energy.
The first full week of 2026 was a probably defining one for Trump’s second presidency after the previous 12 months ended with predictions of his authority ebbing underneath the curse of term-limited commanders in chief.
But Trump was by no means going to take a seat by and watch his strongman’s aura erode.
Trump ousted Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and plans to personally manage the country’s oil reserves as he seeks to dominate the Western Hemisphere. He has demanded ownership of Greenland in a possible new imperialist land seize. And the administration on Sunday vowed no retreat on its purge towards undocumented migrants regardless of the killing of Minneapolis woman Renee Good by an ICE agent.
The second week of the 12 months began with one other political thunderclap Sunday when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell revealed that federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into the renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters. Powell accused the administration of concentrating on him as a result of he gained’t bow to Trump’s stress for massive cuts in rates of interest.
Officials declined to provide particulars of the case, however Powell’s declare to be a sufferer of the weaponization of the Justice Department follows Trump’s use of federal energy to cost perceived enemies, together with former FBI chief James Comey, in circumstances that haven’t all the time stood up in court docket.
The Powell investigation will ship an unmistakable message to his substitute, whom Trump is anticipated to appoint this 12 months: Don’t ignore the president’s calls for even when they shatter the central financial institution’s independence, which has been a pillar of the mighty US financial system.
Trump can also be wrestling with one other extraordinary potential journey overseas. Aides have supplied him choices to implement his pink line with military action against Iran after he warned the US will “start shooting” if the regime cracks downs on rising protests. Despite his threats, lots of of demonstrators have been killed.
The president additionally spent the weekend threatening Cuba on social media. His administration hopes that controlling Venezuela will squeeze the communist regime that has defied the US for 65 years into making a deal with Washington or into political collapse.
So far this 12 months, Trump is indicating that his second 12 months again within the White House will speed up a pattern of the primary: Show him a constitutional curb, a world legislation, or a established order, and his intuition is to smash it.
The result’s that hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe now discover their lives intricately sure up within the whims of essentially the most untamed and unpredictable president in generations.
Trump is deliberating whether or not to throw himself into an much more consequential disaster after the clerical regime of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei turned its guns on protesters regardless of the president’s warnings that doing so might set off US motion.
The potentialities might seem tantalizing to the White House.
► Could US motion hasten the demise of the Iranian Islamic Revolution that has crushed freedoms for more than 45 years, seeded terrorism and thwarted the emergence of the brand new, affluent Middle East Trump believes to be inside attain?
► Or will Trump and his workforce conclude that direct US help for protesters might find yourself intensifying a regime crackdown that has reportedly already brought about large lack of life? This has been a priority in a number of earlier administrations. Iran has additionally warned of reprisals towards US bases and Israel if the US assaults.
► The uncertainty of what might come subsequent in Iran might additionally deter the administration. A democratic transition is just one potential final result if the regime falls. Some specialists concern the emergence of a basic Middle East secular strongman or the eruption of a civil battle that might set off regional chaos and refugee flows.
► There’s additionally the query of how far more the US navy can deal with. The Navy is already stretched by sustaining an enormous armada off Venezuela, which Trump plans to make use of to rule Caracas at a distance. Long-range bombing raids like people who focused Iran’s nuclear program final 12 months may do appreciable harm. But might the US actually make a significant distinction to avenue battles and native clashes breaking out throughout Iran’s cities?
► Then there’s the problem of Trump’s political standing, because the supposedly “America First” president provides midterm voters cause to ask whether or not he’s forgotten their financial considerations. The White House suffered a number of rebukes from Congress final week over war powers flexed in Venezuela and the expiration of enhanced Obamacare subsidies. The self-discipline of the GOP within the House is splintering as antsy members face powerful reelection fights. Still, as NCS reported final week, Trump’s energy to order up primary opponents is retaining a lid on extra expansive Republican defections.
Events of a turbulent early January are constant with Trump’s intention to create most disruption after he left workplace in 2021 believing that institution forces had thwarted his higher instincts.
The president is looking for to reverse many years of progressive advances — for occasion, at universities, legislation companies and businesses by means of his dismantling of variety, fairness, and inclusion initiatives. And he’s looking for to redefine America’s relationship with immigrants, not simply by looking for to deport undocumented migrants, however with a string of steps to curtail authorized immigration and even journey to the US from residents of non-White nations.
There is not any backing down.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday signaled that the tragedy in Minnesota would do nothing to quell the administration’s hardline immigrant purge. She doubled down on her narrative that Good dedicated an act of home terrorism, regardless of a number of movies from the scene casting doubt on that state of affairs. “The facts of the situation are that the vehicle was weaponized, and it attacked the law enforcement officer. He defended himself, and he defended those individuals around him,” Noem told NCS’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stated on the identical present that the officer who shot Good was “a federal agent recklessly using power that ended up in somebody dying.”
“Am I biased in this? Of course. I’m biased, because I got two eyes. Anybody can see these videos, anybody can see that this victim is not a domestic terrorist,” Frey said.
Trump, the agitator, is stirring related discord overseas.
The president’s new national security strategy reveals how he plans to remake the Western Hemisphere in his personal MAGA picture and for the US to dominate it. Trump’s vow to personally control Venezuela’s oil exports represents a outstanding return to imperialism, even when he insists he’ll use the earnings to learn the nation’s individuals. His failure to embrace the democratic opposition after Maduro’s removing raises the likelihood that he plans to preside over a petro-dictatorship for years earlier than Venezuela undergoes a political transition.
Trump’s Greenland seize, in the meantime, threatens to shatter NATO if Europeans don’t capitulate to his colonial ambitions, since nobody ever contemplated an assault on a member by one other member — least of all by its most necessary nation. White House deputy chief of employees Stephen Miller created shockwaves in an interview with Tapper on “The Lead” final week when he described the brand new organizing precept of American international coverage as based mostly in power, pressure and energy.
But one other, lesser-noticed assertion from Miller pointed to implications of Trump’s fast-expanding worldwide ambitions: He desires to finish the post-World War II order led by the United States simply as comprehensively as his tariffs have sought to fracture the global free buying and selling system.
“The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology,” Miller stated, calling for an finish to “this whole period that happened after World War II, where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging and engaging these mass reparations schemes.”
In some ways, Trump’s second presidency has been a hit thus far, judged by itself phrases.
The president’s approval scores could be below 40% with many Americans despairing of his failure to this point to make meals, housing and medical care extra reasonably priced. But Trump has secured the border and made good on his vows to go after undocumented migrants and to pile stress on Democratic jurisdictions that thwart the White House. He’s making strides in imposing his cultural ideology on establishments just like the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Smithsonian, and has used his platform to assault fact-based journalism — all targets which are supported by his most loyal supporters.
Trump’s more and more ravenous bids for global energy are seen by some supporters as a break with “America First” ideas. But Trump has pioneered using sharp, overwhelming navy energy in operations in Iran and Venezuela with out getting drawn into lengthy, bloody land wars that his base abhors.
Yet his aggression raises an more and more pressing query: Is he pushing the nation and the global system to a breaking level?
The administration’s intuition to accentuate ICE raids and deployments to Minnesota after the killing of Good appears sure to gasoline extra political antagonism and elevate the opportunity of extra deaths or accidents that might flip Americans towards Americans.
Trump’s hubris might change into a difficulty, particularly if his rising tolerance for threat in navy operations leads to a tragedy for US personnel. And Trump’s Twenty first-century colonialism and rush to dominate areas and pure assets dangers making a world that rewards strongmen and empires whereas crushing the autonomy of smaller nations. Throughout historical past, such circumstances have set off horrible wars, the likes of which have been prevented by the US-led order after 1945.
Trump’s brute pressure begin to 2026 may need dispelled impressions of his ebbing energy for now. But it comes with large dangers. And America and the world might look very completely different when he’s achieved behind the Resolute Desk.