Trump's early moves to reshape the government, remake the world

USA Today

06-02-2025

Trump's early moves to reshape the government, remake the world | The Excerpt
On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page takes a step back to look at the first few weeks of President Donald Trump's second term. Anti-Trump and anti-Elon Musk protesters rally in cities across the country. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé discusses why younger retirees depend mostly on Social Security. Trump signs an executive order targeting transgender women in sports. New York Fashion Week is here!
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, February 6th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today we take a step back and look at the rapid-fire early actions of Trump's presidency. Plus anti-Trump and Musk protests hit the streets, and how younger retirees are depending on social security.
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We're not even at the three-week mark of President Donald Trump's presidency, and he is already moved more quickly than any modern president. For a step-back, look at this whirlwind start to Trump 2.0. I caught up with USA TODAY, Washington Bureau chief, Susan Page. Hey there, Susan.
Susan Page:
Hey Taylor. How you doing?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for wrapping on today. So we're two and a half weeks in Susan, and as you write, President Trump has really moved faster than any modern-day president. So let's start with some of these really, I think to some, Susan, shocking comments about territorial expansion. What have we heard on this front?
Susan Page:
There was a time when President Trump, not yet president, talked about taking over Greenland. And I think a lot of people thought that it was a joke, but it is clearly not a joke. He is serious. The new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio says about taking over Greenland. And then on Tuesday night we heard him talk about giving the US ownership of the Gaza Strip and making it the Riviera of the Middle East. So for the first time, really since the 19th century, we have a president talking seriously about territorial expansion.
Taylor Wilson:
And we knew coming in that several of Trump's cabinet nominees would be controversial for one reason or another. Susan, how have they landed in front of lawmakers on Capitol Hill?
Susan Page:
You remember at the beginning Trump said if the Senate didn't move fast enough to confirm his nominations, that the Senate and House should recess so he could make recess appointments. That's turned out to be unnecessary. Even some of his most controversial nominations, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services are on a fast track to confirmation, Trump has had no problem at all.
Taylor Wilson:
Susan, you're about Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance as well in this piece as these kinds of enforcers really for the Trump administration. But would you talk through that idea a bit? I mean, what's their impact and influence been over these first couple of weeks?
Susan Page:
This is an asset that Donald Trump didn't really have in his first term. And his first term, Mike Pence is vice president, not really a trusted member of his inner circle. JD Vance clearly is and has been important, especially in getting these confirmations through the Senate. Elon Musk, the president's best friend apparently, has become the most powerful official in government besides the president himself. The President Trump, in his first term, had some officials around him who tried to restrain his most provocative instincts. Well, Elon Musk is trying to fuel Donald Trump's most provocative instincts and he's had the skills to, for instance, get access to the nation's biggest computer systems in the federal government, the ones with federal employees, the ones that have treasury department payouts, and he's taking a look there and it's not entirely clear what he is trying to do. We know Elon Musk wants a smaller government and less spending and he has certainly used some really unprecedented tools to try to get there.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Susan, we also knew even on the campaign trail that if Donald Trump won the election, he'd enter office with a kind of retribution agenda. Have we seen that play out as expected?
Susan Page:
We knew that retribution was going to be on Trump's mind. It wasn't clear before he was inaugurated how high a priority it would be. Well, it turns out to be a high priority indeed. On his very first day in office on January 20th, he pardoned virtually all of the defendants on the January 6th assault on the Capitol. That has distressed among other people, his nominee to head the FBI who said he wouldn't have agreed to the pardoning of those who were convicted of assaulting police officers. But it's a sign of how sweeping Trump's agenda is on this front. And we have seen purges in the Justice Department and the FBI of those involved in those investigations.
Taylor Wilson:
And I think Susan, if we were to choose maybe two words to define these first weeks, they would be executive orders. Just how has he used this option as president? It seems like there's a new flurry of these almost every day.
Susan Page:
And they've done some pretty big things. He's left the World Health Organization, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. He declared national emergencies on energy and on the border. He's done some things that may have gone beyond the authority of the presidency. We're not going to find that out for a while though, because that will take the kind of court action that always takes a long time to unfold.
Taylor Wilson:
And I'm curious, Susan, before I let you go, if I could wrap by asking you a little bit about Trump fatigue. I've had conversations with reporters and editors about this. How do we balance covering all the big news each day? And there's a ton of it, without making it really just the Trump show?
Susan Page:
We've tried to learn some lessons from covering Donald Trump's first term. And one thing is that you can't chase every shiny object and the other is put your focus on the things that really affect Americans in their daily lives.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Susan Page is USA TODAY's Washington Bureau chief. Thank you, Susan.
Susan Page:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Groups opposed to actions by the Trump administration over its first few weeks, hit the streets and cities across the country yesterday for protests, days after widespread rallies and street marches against President Donald Trump's immigration policies. In Washington, there were multiple protests near the US Capitol. Many also went after Elon Musk who has been executing Trump's cost-cutting initiative to reduce the size of the US government.
Protesters:
Elon Musk has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho.
Taylor Wilson:
Along with Washington, there were notable protests in New York, Chicago, and Texas where Musk lives. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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President Donald Trump:
The war on women's sports is over.
Taylor Wilson:
President Trump sought to ban transgender student athletes from playing women's sports and cut off federal funds for schools that don't comply. His executive order yesterday could also block transgender athletes from entering the country for the 2028 Olympics, said for Los Angeles. The order directs the Department of Education, which Trump wants to eliminate to pursue enforcement actions under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex and educational institutions. But some legal experts question whether the Trump administration's interpretation of the law would hold in court. The Biden administration expanded protections for transgender students with new Title IX rules, but they were recently overturned by a federal judge. Now Trump wants to use the law to go after schools with trans-inclusive policies.
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Younger retirees depend mostly on social security. Is that enough to live on? I spoke with USA TODAY personal finance reporter, Daniel DeVisee for more. Hey there Daniel.
Daniel de Visé:
Hey, good to talk to you.
Taylor Wilson:
Always good to talk, Daniel. So what did this research find about younger retirees and social security?
Daniel de Visé:
I saw a figure buried deep on a survey from a really good organization that says that the younger you are when you retire, the more you're relying on social security and retirement. So people ages 62 and 63, who are some of the youngest retirees, are drawing three quarters of their income from social security. Whereas the oldest people surveyed by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, people aged 74 and 75 said only half of their income is coming from Social Security.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. Okay. So a big difference. Why are younger retirees relying so much on this, Daniel? I mean, is this a result of declining pensions, other factors at play? What's going on here?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, that's right. There was this pension era and the pension era has just gradually receded, so that people who are in their '70s or '80s now, a lot of them have pensions. People who are retiring now at age 60, or 62, or 63 are much less likely to have a pension. And people who have pensions have a big source of dependable monthly income until they die on top of Social Security. And the people who don't have pensions do not. That's the difference.
Taylor Wilson:
We should say, as you outlined in this piece, there are some complications, right? When comparing retirees of different ages as we're doing here, what are those? Can you talk through that a little bit?
Daniel de Visé:
Yeah, so some of what we're seeing in those data points I just read you, some of it is that people who retire younger, like 62, 61, just on average are likely to be a little less wealthy, maybe to have a little less income. And also if they're claiming Social Security that early, that's the earliest you can claim it. That too suggests they might be under a little bit of distress. So we might be partly just seeing that people who are retiring around 60 are just a little bit hard up, but a lot of it is this sort of generational trend. And my generation, generation X, who's retiring next, I'm told are going to be even more in trouble, because they're even much less likely to have any kind of pension money, and that means they're going to be maybe even more reliant on Social Security.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, absolutely. In terms of what Social Security actually is, Daniel and what it's really meant for, I mean, is it intended to finance whole retirements? What's it actually kind of intended for?
Daniel de Visé:
It never was meant to be the be-all and end-all. On average, Social Security is supposed to make up about 40% of your retirement income. Now, if you're a pensioner, a person with a pension, with a good pension, that might be the other 50, 60%. The modern sort of method is you're supposed to be, we are all supposed to be saving in these 401K IRA accounts, building up ideally hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, and then that becomes the other half of your income in retirement. Now you could have other plans, maybe you have an apartment you're renting out, maybe you're independently wealthy, maybe you inherit money, but Social Security was never meant to be most, let alone all of your retirement income.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, folks can find more of these research findings with a link in today's show notes. Daniel DeVisee covers personal finance for USA TODAY. Thanks, Daniel.
Daniel de Visé:
Always a pleasure.
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Taylor Wilson:
New York Fashion Week kicks off today and nearly 60 runway shows are expected. Designer Brandon Maxwell's show will launch the week before Tom Brown's runway presentation, a mix of American menswear classics. We'll wrap things up next week. The CFDA, which organizes fashion weeks across the globe, partnered for the first time last year with Rockefeller Center to stream presentations of collections for public viewing. This year not all the shows will be broadcast, but you can follow along with USA TODAY's up-to-date coverage.
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Climate change is impacting so many aspects of our lives, but one that you may not have thought a lot about is what kind of foods are available for future generations.
Sam Kass:
Georgia, years ago, lost 90% of their peach crop due to climate-related weather conditions, but hopefully this year the peaches will be back. But year over year, we're going to see declines in yields across many of the foods that we love.
Taylor Wilson:
That's culinary entrepreneur, Sam Kass, former chef to the Obamas. He spoke with my colleague, Dana Taylor, about the tech he sees as most promising for navigating this threat. You can listen to that episode right here on this feed today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.