The week the blob derailed Project Trump

Yahoo

26-04-2025

The US invasion of Iraq began with a massive show of force. Almost 2,000 airstrikes and missile launches preceded a sweeping ground offensive towards Baghdad. A little under three weeks later, the Iraqi military was defeated. Victory was declared. Except that it was not until eight years and eight months later that the last American soldiers left. The initial rush to capture the centre had succeeded; the long war against the insurgency that followed proved harder.
Donald Trump's second term as president is following a similar trajectory. His inauguration was followed by a shock and awe campaign of executive orders starting on day one. He has now issued 124, a figure which is likely to be dwarfed by the time he leaves office. These orders – directing the resources and focus of the federal government – have covered the full spectrum of policy areas, creating and erasing policies with the stroke of a pen.
Funding for USAID has been slashed, DEI initiatives rolled back and a full-scale effort to deport illegal migrants commenced. Sweeping tariffs have been imposed on imports, with China singled out for particularly brutal rates, and tens of thousands of federal government employees laid off.
Rather than go through the time-consuming process of passing legislation through Congress Trump has pursued his agenda by means under his direct control, seeking to reshape the American state and crush or bypass what he sees as the 'Deep State', 'swamp' or 'Blob' at the heart of US politics: the accretion of laws, organisations and incentives that obstructed his agenda during his first term in office.
He was joined in this effort by tech billionaire Elon Musk, heading up a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aiming to cut spending and the size of the federal government, and backed by extensive research and planning from organisations across the Right. A combination of sheer volume of blows, focused efforts, and Trump's approach to negotiation would yield results and fast, leaving opposition disoriented and fragmented. Legislative shock and awe.
Yet as the opening 100 days of Trump's second term draw to a close, his radical agenda has this week been blunted or repelled on multiple fronts. Listen to the opposition and his tariffs plan is coming apart at the seams; the drive for peace in Ukraine is a sell-out to Putin; Elon Musk is reducing his commitment to DOGE, and lawyers opposed to the Republican agenda have racked up a string of legal victories in a concerted campaign of 'lawfare' aiming to undermine, overturn, or otherwise obstruct his executive orders.
For the first time, whether Trump can push through his agenda is an open question. If he fails, analysts may well look back on this week as the moment serious cracks appeared. Because the blob is not rolling over. The blob is fighting back.
If you were looking for a single document summarising Trump's experience in office to date, you could do a lot worse than Executive Order 14257: the implementation of the 'Liberation Day' tariffs targeting the 'lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships' that posed 'an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States'.
Everything is there: the use of executive authority to make changes with immense and sweeping impact, legal rationales based on national security concerns and the declaration of a national emergency, the desire for greater independence and autonomy, Trump's unique approach to negotiations, and the subsequent 'lawfare' backlash.
The initial declaration resulted in chaos in the markets. Stocks plummeted, bond yields rose, and the value of the dollar took a major blow. China found itself in an escalating spiral of tit-for-tat tariffs that's set to see trade volumes at major US ports tumble. Growth forecasts were slashed, and consumer sentiment hit its second-lowest level since 1952.
Almost immediately, the administration began to walk back its measures. Tariffs on partners other than China were suspended, and the rates for the latter cut. Signals were sent that the White House wanted to negotiate. Markets rose, and with them hopes that the global trading system could be recovered.
To some degree, this is clearly what Trump wants. Create chaos, and exploit it. Make grand statements, create leverage, and drive hard bargains. As one adviser told CNN, 'talking deals with the most powerful people in the world when he's got all the cards and leverage is like air for him'.
The problem is that what's unfolding doesn't make it look like he has all the cards. Beijing has not been cowed into concessions, with China and the US locked in a public spat over whether they're engaging in private negotiations. The White House, meanwhile, appears to be divided on whether the tariff plan is going to work and what the objective should be, with Elon Musk publicly and harshly criticising trade adviser Peter Navarro, and the Wall Street Journal reporting that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick talked Trump into a partial climbdown.
And then, of course, there's the lawfare. A dozen US states have filed a lawsuit against the administration arguing that the tariff policy is illegal, following on the heels of cases brought by private sector businesses.
It's difficult to think of a better summary of the current problems facing Trump's efforts to reshape the US state. Each of the problems here is mirrored and reflected in other policy areas.
Lawsuits are a recurring theme in the swamp's fightback against Trump's agenda. The US system affords the President a great deal of authority; equally, it grants district county judges the ability to block the orders he hands down.
In the words of Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, this has led to 'unelected rogue regional judges… ordering the Administration to fund criminal sanctuaries for illegals and let the illegals vote' in 'a lawless usurpation of democracy itself'.
In an extraordinary incident on Friday that appeared to suggest some were going further still, a Wisconsin judge was arrested at the courthouse where she works for allegedly obstructing efforts to arrest a migrant.
The frustration is palpable: listen to the Republican sphere, and you will hear that activist judges are lodging injunctions, delaying the president's policies, and conniving with Left-leaning organisations acting to thwart the declared will of the American people.
It's certainly true that large sections of the Left appear to hold the view that the Right attempting to govern should be illegal. As in Britain, the US body of laws is large and open to interpretation. The result is what appears to those on the Right to be a system that is weaponised against the President's policies.
Equally, the White House has shown little inclination to adhere to precedent and policy, and a willingness to stretch the definitions of its powers in an attempt to enforce its will. At times, the strategy resembles that adopted by Elon Musk's companies; move quickly, treat lawsuits as a cost of doing business, and attempt to make sure that it's impossible for the courts to reverse your course.
The most public series of disputes have surrounded the enforcement of US immigration law. Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who is chief judge of the federal district court in Washington DC, has become a focus of particular ire over his attempts to block the deportation of 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Judge Boasberg issued an 11th-hour order temporarily blocking the deportations. The planes, however, were already in the air, bound for El Salvador and Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered their return without success, and to the surprise of few followed this up by ruling that the use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to enforce deportations was illegal.
As it pursues its appeal, the Justice Department has asked the court to pause its order so it can continue with the deportation flights, arguing that Judge Boasberg's decision was 'fundamentally misconceived from the start, needlessly prompting a constitutional confrontation over criminal contempt that never should have arisen.'
But until a decision is made, the flights remain on the ground and with them, 'some very bad people'. 'I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because, you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out, and you can't have a trial for all of these people,' as Trump put it this week. Meanwhile, human rights lawyers are preparing arguments that the eighth amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment should prevent Americans being sent to El Salvador.
It's a familiar problem from a British perspective: state systems breaking under the scale of the problem of enforcement and the multiple legal tripwires laid by legislators and judges past and present. What should be a matter of politics and policy becomes a matter of law, either due to the obstinacy of a defeated political movement that is unwilling to accept the legitimacy of its opponents rule, or the disdain held by the Right for conventional laws and the idea that rights should be upheld. Pick whichever argument appeals to you most; the end result is the same.
The result is not swift action but politico-judicial ping-pong: seated behind his desk, Trump will sign an executive order only to see a district judge almost immediately move to block it. The administration then launches an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which hears arguments from both sides. And until a ruling is made – which can take several weeks – the order remains effectively frozen, enforcement prohibited, and room is created for opposition organisations to prepare and take advantage.
Take the inauguration day order aimed at ending birthright citizenship for those whose parents were in the US illegally or temporarily, a pledge Trump had made repeatedly during his campaign, and a law created in part by wide judicial interpretations of an amendment intended to protect the descendants of slaves.
The order was almost immediately challenged in court by a coalition of organisations. At least 10 lawsuits were lodged by various plaintiffs, including 22 US state attorneys general, civil liberties and immigrants rights groups, and pregnant women. Soon after, four federal judges issued preliminary injunctions blocking its implementation nationwide. To appeal, the government turned to the Supreme Court. Today, almost five months after the President first signed the executive order, the edict remains entangled in the weeds of the US court system with no sign of a ruling.
To the Left, this is an attempt to defend the rights of Americans. To the Right, it's a blatant attempt to delay or bar Trump from fulfilling his democratic mandate and his election pledges, pursuing through the courts victories they could not achieve at the ballot box.
This perception may well be fuelling the particular strain of obstinacy directed at the courts. In the words of Harrison Field, special assistant to the president. 'No amount of Democrat obstruction will stop President Trump from delivering on the promises he made to the American people. Radical, out-of-touch Democrats should clean up the disasters they've created in their own states before trying to promote their failed policies to the rest of America.'
Fighting words, but matched by the opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union is promising to 'put up the fight of the century' against Trump's policies. Having filed 424 legal challenges against the administration during his first term, we can expect a comparable workload for the courts over the coming years.
As their website puts it, the organisation will 'fight to invalidate Trump administration policies that permit discrimination across the federal government, and to shut down the administration's efforts to require discrimination at the state and local levels'.
Other policies, too, are facing a wave of obstructive lawsuits. In February civil rights organisations including the National Urban League and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago launched a challenge to executive orders seeking to stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on the basis that the order infringes upon free speech and process. The case remains pending.
Harvard, meanwhile, has become the frontline in the war on the campus. The Ivy League university was the first institution of its kind to reject White House demands to overhaul hiring, admissions and teaching practices, underpinned by officials' fears that colleges have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism. In turn, it is now suing the administration over the freezing of $2.2 billion in funding, winning the praise of former President Barack Obama in the process for 'rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom'.
The limits of White House power are on display elsewhere far beyond the courtroom too. In Ukraine, early promises to end the war in a day have given way to visible frustration as Trump runs into the boundaries of his ability to impose a deal by fiat. The White House insists a deal is 'pretty close' but Putin clearly feels as if he has the upper hand, and knows that most of the pressure Trump can put on Zelensky would be of a form likely to benefit Russia on the battlefield. Zelensky, meanwhile, is unwilling to legally cede territory, bound by legal and constitutional ties, and seeks security assurances that Trump seems unwilling to give.
Far from twisting the arms of both parties into accepting a negotiated settlement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has started to make noises about America's readiness to 'move on' from negotiations entirely, pulling out of a planned meeting with European foreign ministers in London.
Putin seems aware that, with Trump's patience limited, time is on his side. But 'waiting it out' is a tactic only display by domestic opponents as well. In Washington, Elon Musk is dialling down his commitment to DOGE. The billionaire's post is legally that of 'special government employee', which limits him to 130 days of government work in each year. And that allotment is rapidly running out.
His partial departure will inevitably hamper Trump's mission to reshape the state: Musk and his track record of streamlining and reorganising business are unique and there is no comparable figure waiting to take the reins. Facing resistance from government departments, potential power struggles with other political appointees, and a swathe of lawsuits, DOGE's many enemies know its furious momentum is almost certain to fade without him. Just look, they say, at how Tesla's fortunes have plunged without the day-to-day attention of its founder.
Resistance to a project as sweeping as Trump's was always going to materialise. Whether the White House will be able to overcome it is a different matter entirely.
His international efforts – where the power of the US executive is less relevant – may be genuinely foundering. Trump's approach to negotiations is to make a maximal ask, cause chaos, and then offer a compromise that gets what he originally wanted. In Ukraine, the lopsided influence Trump can deploy is making it hard to reach a deal that all parties can accept. In trade negotiations with China, Xi Jinping appears unwilling to budge.
At the same time, however, trade negotiations with other parties are continuing, and US companies are beginning to look at extricating themselves from China's embrace. If Trump can emerge from this crisis with improved access to the markets of friendly nations, a partial realignment away from China, and a de-escalation that avoids a domestic recession, he may well try to claim victory. Whether he will succeed is an open question. Similarly, if Trump can pressure Zelensky into accepting a bad deal for Ukraine, he will claim to have ended a war that began under Joe Biden and brought peace to Europe – even if it comes at a cost Western capitals would balk at.
Domestically, suggests Jonathan Butcher of The Heritage Foundation, the aim of Trump's opponents is to force the Trumpian Right 'to take our eyes off the ball, take our eyes off of what the ultimate objective is'. At least so far as Harvard goes, he notes, the tactic is 'to absolve Harvard from any wrongdoing'. But if Trump's team can remain 'committed to things like upholding the civil rights law, and sticking to the core principles of defending anti-discrimination law and these clearly moral questions of protecting women and in private spaces, I think they're going to be fine.'
If that optimism turns out to be true for Trump's broader agenda, the American president will be able to claim a monumental reshaping of the American state. If he is brought low, however, tramelled and contained by a thousand obstructions like Gulliver tied in knots by the Lilliputians, he will be forced to turn to more conventional political means. That means relying on notoriously fractious Republicans in Congress to pass legislation in pursuit of his goals before midterm elections. Radicalism will be out. Caution back in.
Just 100 days in, then, the stakes could hardly be higher. If Trump falters now, he may be doomed to see out the rest of his term raging in futility against the structures that thwarted him. And that is precisely what his enemies are hoping for.
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