From Gaza to Ukraine, and from federal judges to the Federal Reserve, President Donald Trump has seen his early White House success take the backseat in a new struggle.
Elon Musk hits Trump’s big tax bill on x
A few days after leaving the White House, Elon Musk condemned President Trump’s big tax bill on X.
Washington – Reign? It’s more difficult than it looks.
Just as Donald Trump pushes him to pass the central presence of his domestic agenda, former BFF Elon Musk is destroying his “big, beautiful bill” as “nasty hatred.” The president’s prediction that Vladimir Putin will listen to his pleading to end the Ukrainian war in 24 hours has grown in the fifth month.
The judge he appointed to the bench is bold in controlling him.
From cutting federal spending, deporting illegal immigrants, reaching nuclear deals with Iran, to negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza, Team Trump bumps into obstacles that make it difficult to do with confidence before moving to the White House.
There are several skid marks where rubber has come across the road.
Certainly, some of the Trump issues come from the surplus of early success and the breadth of his ambitions. Through a flood of executive orders and actions, he began to transform the American approach to the American world and the role of the federal government in American life.
Congressional Democrats still struggle to create a consistent and consistent strategy against him.
But pushbacks from other forces are increasingly problematic for the White House – increasingly problematic for skeptical judges, foreign leaders with their own priorities, the stable Federal Reserve system, and the reality of budget arithmetic.
If Trump’s first 100 days are roller coasters, the second 100 days, the span that ends on August 8th, has proven to be a bit slow.
Ukraine: “It will take place within 24 hours.”
Trump’s question – for many of his predecessors in the White House – is how he chooses whether to double or adjust his goals and tactics when obstacles are looming, and how he responds.
Consider Ukraine.
In dozens of campaign speeches, Trump nominees said he would resolve the war in Ukraine once he takes office, perhaps before he moves out.
“I know Zelensky, I know Putin,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania. It happens very quickly. ”
But Putin has taken Trump’s demands for a quick ceasefire, and the Ukrainian forces have designed a spectacular drone attack on Russian troops. The end of the war seems to be nowhere to be seen. “I’m extremely disappointed,” Trump said on May 28th.
What will he do next?
Trump is threatening sanctions against Russia, but he clearly doesn’t want to impose them. He also suggests that the US might just leave, leaving the conflict to grasp two fighting parties and Europeans.
He faces similar calculations on tariffs, where he delayed or reduced his most widespread threat to China and elsewhere, which appear to rattle the stock market. He is following his deadline for trading partners to either make a deal on July 8th or suffer the toughest tariffs in nearly a century?
And in Gaza, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime ally, resisted the administration’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire. “Let’s get through that, go back to peace and stop killing people,” Trump vowed during his 2024 campaign. However, the region has been plagued by confusion and violence over the distribution of food aid recently.
A familiar problem for the president
Trump is not the first president to find himself hampered by the frustration of the balance of governance and power.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was very furious at the Supreme Court decision to cover his new contract in 1937, and he proposed cramming the court with additional, perhaps friendly judiciary. The High Court began to welcome his initiative more, but the idea went nowhere.
More than half a century later, Bill Clinton adopted a strategy of cooperation with new Republican House Speaker Newt Ginrich when Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. The policy, known as “triangulation,” has discouraged liberal Democrats, but has led to a balanced budget with welfare reform.
After a democratic set-off in the midterm of 2014, Barack Obama said he still has the ability to deploy “pen and phone” — meaning signing executive action and energizing external allies.
Trump enjoys considerable political assets, including a downsizing of Democratic leadership and Congressional Republican loyalty.
It is being tested by the fight over a bill known as settlement. The vast measure will expand and expand tax cuts from Trump’s first term, adding billions of dollars for border security, and cutting billions of dollars from Medicaid and Clean Energy tax credits.
And, an updated estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it would increase national debt by budgeting $2.4 trillion over a decade.
In previous showdowns, Trump won in Congress. This is because GOP members see that if the unfortunate president supports a major challenger against them, they are at risk of their re-election. He is lobbying the bill as “arguably the most important legislation that signs the history of our country.”
But Musk, who led Trump’s Doge budget cut initiative until May 27, has been heavier on the other side, warning that the law will generate “overwhelmingly unsustainable debt.” His warnings have been cited by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and a handful of other GOP senators who have been involved in the bill’s impact on the federal deficit.
The tech billionaire posted his own election threat to X. Social media platforms are also political assets. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars that the world’s wealthiest people have spent in political campaigns in the past.
“Next November,” he proposed, “We will fire all the politicians who betray the American people.”
