President Donald Trump on Tuesday marks his first year back in the White House after a shock-and-awe policy blitz that has expanded presidential power and reshaped America’s place in the world.
As he moves into his second year, Trump appears increasingly unbound, pressing an agenda that has deepened political and social divisions at home.
In recent weeks, he has ordered an intensified federal crackdown on illegal immigration in Minnesota that culminated in the fatal shooting of an unarmed woman by a federal agent, authorized a bold military operation in Venezuela aimed at capturing President Nicolas Maduro, revived his long-mooted proposal to take over Greenland, threatened military action against Iran, and brushed aside concerns over a criminal investigation involving Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
“I don’t care,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview last week when asked about the potential economic fallout from the probe into Powell. Speaking to The New York Times on Jan. 7, Trump said the only check on him as commander in chief when launching military strikes abroad was “my own morality.”
Taken together, Trump’s comments underscore a view of the presidency in which he is constrained chiefly by his own judgment rather than by institutional limits.
