As Donald Trump’s second administration passed the eight-week mark (on Monday, for those keeping count at home), the firehose of news gushing out of Washington, D.C., has made it plain—in case there was any doubt—that the 45th and 47th president of the United States seems as determined as ever to dominate the federal government, specifically, and American politics generally.
At The Dispatch, our charge is to take the broader view and not fall for the social media information trap. To that extent, I think we’ve succeeded, in that you haven’t, or won’t, find much in our digital pages on Trump’s tweets—er, Truth Social posts republished on X. But the news is the news, and there’s no denying that the president is making, or attempting to make, an untold number of consequential changes to the federal government and how it operates, both at home and abroad, to say nothing of trying to completely refashion the values governing American domestic and foreign policy. And so our news coverage and context-rich commentary is doing its best to keep track of it all for you.
This week, The Dispatch published a deeply reported piece by senior editor Michael Warren chronicling Trump’s overhaul of the government’s foreign policy apparatus, as well as a detailed dissection by John McCormack of the Trump administration’s efforts to bring Columbia University to heel over its failure to tamp down the antisemitic behavior of many of its students and faculty in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel. If you’re so inclined, you can also check out my reporting on how farmers and manufacturers are dealing with Trump’s aggressive implementation of tariffs.
—David
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