12 Days in Trump's America
Here's a fact that might surprise you: Only 12 days have passed since the catastrophic meltdown of the relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump—since the ousted Dogefather attempted to kill the president's signature legislation, endorsed his impeachment, and claimed that Trump appeared in the 'Epstein files.'
That weird day of rubbernecking, alternatively terrifying and transfixing, was just June 5, but it feels like forever ago to me—largely because so much news has occurred since then. So much is happening that even Musk's attempted rapprochement with Trump, customized hat in hand, barely made a ripple.
Let's review the tape. The next day, ICE officers began conducting raids in Los Angeles. As word of the raids spread, demonstrators filled the streets of Los Angeles to protest and confront federal agents. That evening, an important moment occurred in another immigration-related story: The executive branch announced both that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it had said would never return to the United States, was back on American soil, and that he was being charged with human smuggling. (He has pleaded not guilty.)
The following day, June 7, protests became tenser in Los Angeles, and Trump federalized the California National Guard over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom, and despite local law-enforcement leaders saying it was unnecessary. As my colleague Tom Nichols wrote, that appeared to be a direct attempt to provoke unrest—and, as my colleague David Frum added, a way for the president to test how he could use emergency powers to seize control. These attempts to flex power also have the effect of encouraging more protest, though. Heavy-handed methods to suppress dissent are unpopular with many Americans. By the following weekend, the backlash would be very apparent.
On Monday, June 9, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he was firing all 17 members of the CDC panel that guides federal vaccine recommendations—despite having previously promised a senator he wouldn't meddle with the committee. Kennedy's replacement members include multiple vaccine skeptics, as my colleague Nicholas Florko reported. In the evening, the Trump administration took another step toward domestic militarization in Los Angeles when the administration announced that it would send hundreds of Marines to the city.
Tuesday, June 10, was a busy day. Trump traveled to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where he delivered a nakedly political speech before soldiers who jeered at Democrats, including former President Joe Biden. A later report indicated that soldiers who attended had been screened for their politics. Trump also announced that he would revert the names of several bases that had previously honored Confederate officers—though the Pentagon insists, unconvincingly, that the names actually honor other veterans with the same surnames. Elsewhere, Interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, Trump's former personal lawyer, announced a dubious indictment against a Democratic member of Congress, and The New York Times reported that the EPA plans to drastically reduce limits on emissions of poisonous mercury.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before a Senate subcommittee, where he refused to answer questions about the planned acquisition of a 747 from Qatar and was unable to answer ones about the legal authority under which Marines were going to L.A. That evening, Trump attended a performance of Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, following his hostile takeover of the D.C. performing-arts venue. Vice President J. D. Vance had no idea what the plot was, and although the president claims to love the musical, he doesn't get it. Attendees booed him.
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office published estimates finding that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, it's really called that) would impoverish the poorest Americans while making the richest ones richer. That afternoon, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was tackled and handcuffed when he interrupted a press conference by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. DHS claimed that Padilla hadn't identified himself, a statement easily debunked by video. A federal judge found Trump's federalization of the National Guard unlawful, though an appeals court has stayed the decision for now.
That night, Washington time, Israel began strikes on Iran, targeting Iran's nuclear program and defense leaders. As The Atlantic reported, Trump tried and failed to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of the strikes, but once they'd begun, Trump embraced them. Meanwhile, his appointees at Voice of America 's parent agency suddenly realized that maybe this would be a good time to be able to communicate with Iranians and hurriedly recalled Farsi-language staffers who'd been placed on leave.
The next day was Friday the 13th. Ironically, the day proved quiet.
On Saturday, however, chaos returned. The day began with news of an alleged assassin killing a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and injuring another and his wife. Although the man's motivations have not yet been fully explained, the attacks are the latest in a string of incidents of political violence during the Trump era. One major factor is that the president has repeatedly and directly urged violence against his political adversaries, as Brian Klaas wrote. Republican members of Congress rushed to baselessly insist the shooter was a leftist.
Saturday was also Trump's birthday and the day chosen (supposedly coincidentally) for a big military parade in Washington, D.C. The parade was sparsely attended. Far more popular were the protests against Trump in cities across the country, which observers estimated saw attendance in the millions. That would make them some of the largest protests in American history.
These enormous demonstrations against Trump were closely connected to what occurred in the days before. This kind of chaos wears on people. Whenever Trump does something provocative, such as the Los Angeles escalation, during the middle of an already negative news cycle, some pundits are quick to label it an attempt at distraction. Perhaps that's the goal, consciously or not, but it's not politically effective, and a big reason is that the distraction is almost always politically damaging. If you shift public attention from one unpopular thing to another, you're not gaining anything. And a growing pile of data shows that Trump's actions in Los Angeles are unpopular, just as he is personally unpopular; the One Big Beautiful Bill is unpopular; and Americans disapprove of his handling of most issues.
A stretch of news like this is no longer unprecedented. During his first term in office, Trump had several of these disastrous runs of jaw-dropping news. Voters hated it. His approval rating cratered early and never recovered. Republicans lost big in the 2018 midterm elections; Trump lost in 2020; and the GOP underperformed in 2022, all of which pointed to the existence of an anti-MAGA majority in the electorate. Trump was able to win in 2024 only after four years out of office, and with the help of serious inflation and a faltering, denialist incumbent. Trump's ambitions and the danger he poses may have expanded in his second term, but in many ways he's the same old Trump—and voters still don't like it.
The tyrant test
Putin isn't actually enjoying this.
Alexandra Petri: 'My super-special 79th was not super special.'
After a 43-hour manhunt, the suspect accused of killing a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and wounding a state senator and his wife was apprehended yesterday and appeared in federal court this afternoon.
Israeli strikes hit the headquarters of Iran's state broadcaster in the middle of a broadcast. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to rule out targeting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Authorities said yesterday that a man believed to be part of a peacekeeping team shot and killed a bystander at a 'No Kings' protest in Salt Lake City on Saturday. The bystander was near a man who was also shot after brandishing a rifle at the protest, according to officials.
Dispatches
Evening Read
Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes
By Eric Bulson
When Richard Ellmann's James Joyce hit the shelves in 1959, the sheer size of the book (842 pages, 100 longer than Ulysses) was as dazzling as the degree of detail. Joyce, who had been dead for 18 years, vividly inhabited its chapters, getting drunk, going blind, spending money, spiting enemies, cogitating, and, of course, creating a series of works that immediately made literary history. Moving briskly across the first half of the 20th century (not just a single day in Dublin), Ellmann spun a tale about the formation of a writer whose name could be mentioned in the same breath as Homer's without irony …
You also need charm, lots of it, to make a biography like James Joyce happen.
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Play our daily crossword.
P.S.
William Langewiesche, a member of the pantheon of Atlantic greats, died yesterday at just 70 years old. The New York Times called him ' the Steve McQueen of journalism.' He wrote for the magazine for many years, and his last article here, from 2019, was a definitive exploration of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Langewiesche was a second-generation pilot and second-generation author—his father, Wolfgang, wrote the canonical flying manual Stick and Rudder —and many of his most notable works were careful dissections of aircraft-related disasters, as well as other catastrophes. My personal favorites are probably ' A Sea Story,' about a 1994 ferry sinking in the Baltic Sea, and ' The Human Factor,' a Vanity Fair essay about the crash of Air France Flight 447. Beware before clicking, though: Once you start reading a Langewiesche piece, you're unlikely to be able to stop.
— David
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