Trump’s Revolution
Taken together, Trump’s barrage of executive orders represent a sweeping change to American life.
American democracy is undergoing one of its most disruptive experiments in modern times. In just eight months back in office, Donald Trump has unleashed a torrent of executive orders that stretch the boundaries of presidential power, reshaping the balance between the executive and Congress while reverberating across global alliances that have anchored the international order since World War II. The question is no longer whether these actions are bold, but whether they mark a temporary populist surge or the foundation of a permanent transformation in American governance.
The focus mostly centers around individual high-profile programs involving immigration, tariffs, federal workforce reductions, climate change, legal rights, trade, and economic priorities. However, an aggressive brand of American nationalism links these individual program changes to the backbone of the “America First” strategy that prioritizes US interests, often at the expense of the nation’s traditional partners and allies.
Since taking office, the president has issued more than 200 executive orders, sidelined the US Congress, and implemented sweeping changes to American life with the stroke of a pen. His actions reshaped federal-state relationships, militarized law enforcement, challenged cherished American values, and disrupted global alliances that helped maintain peace since World War II.
Immigration as a Tool of Executive Power
Immigration reform – a signature issue to his conservative, political base – is the engine the White House uses to drive action on everything from trade protectionism to tariffs that rattle the nerves of investors.
Soon after his inauguration, the president signed a series of executive orders on immigration policy, the most significant of which declared a “national emergency” at the southern border of America. At the time, a series of actions taken by the Biden administration had resulted in the lowest number of border crossings in years.
Nevertheless, Americans soon witnessed masked border agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) swarming across the country to deport immigrants, placing them on planes and buses before giving them their day in court, a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.
photo by Ricardo IV Tamayo
Immigration enforcement quickly escalated into a display of federal power, with estimates suggesting 200,000–300,000 removals this year. That figure, far short of the administration’s one-million target, highlights the gap between political ambition and institutional capacity, while also raising constitutional concerns about due process in expedited removals.
Immigration is not just a policy area but a political lever ratcheting up Trump’s wider agenda, connecting border enforcement to broader questions of trade, economic nationalism, and executive authority.
Chicago Becomes a Tinderbox
In a stark departure from past policies, the Trump White House also deployed the US military to assist in its immigration crackdown. Most recently, it initiated a program to start charging steep fees for allowing immigrants with critically needed skills to enter the country.
The policies are controversial. America views itself as a nation with core values, such as due process, enshrined in its constitution. It is the only nation in the world with a First Amendment that guarantees free speech and free press. Mass workplace raids underscored how immigration enforcement blurred the line between policing and civil rights, fueling unease over constitutional protections.
Even worse, Trump deployed troops from the Texas and California National Guards to Democratic strongholds such as Chicago and Portland, Oregon respectively, over the objections of Gov. JB Pritzker and Gov. Gavin Newsom. The presence of the troops creates a tinder box for possible violence. Deploying soldiers from one state to invade another also stokes memories of the nation’s Civil War. In Chicago, federal agents used Black Hawk helicopters and military vehicles to arrest more than 1,000 residents in unprovoked raids that involved tear gas and a fatal shooting. Mayor Brandon Johnson issued an executive order banning masked Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE) agents from using city-owned property for staging areas. Gov. Pritzker also filed suit, arguing the troops were not needed and that the deployment violated federal law. Nevertheless, federal ICE agents arrested innocent citizens and immigrants alike in raids that stretch the law.
Public opinion on immigration remans mixed, though, with support heaviest among the president’s Republican base. However, the president’s overall net approval rating has fallen below that of former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama at this point in their respective terms, according to The Economist.
The president’s immigration policies have also sparked legal challenges and criticism from allies in Silicon Valley, which heavily relies on H-1B visa petitions to recruit global talent in software engineering, data science, and artificial intelligence, primarily from India. They have also created a climate of fear, not only among undocumented immigrants but also among legal residents and international students.
A common denominator exists for the individual policy changes the president has rammed through Congress. It is a comprehensive conservative government policy blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation and adopted by the administration. This blueprint, known as Project 2025, connects the immigration crackdown to a wider re-engineering of federal power, handing Trump a ready-made framework for reshaping institutions.
Expanding Presidential Reach, Heritage Foundation and Project 2025
During the campaign, Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025, a 900-page document that advocated a significantly stronger executive branch of the government. Yet, since he took office, the president has religiously followed the policies outlined in the document.
Project 2025, for instance, advocated for granting the president extraordinary powers, including the ability to rule by executive order and the authority to fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies, such as the US Federal Reserve Board, an action he is currently pursuing.
In Trump’s implementation of the plan, one thing leads to another. America needs aggressive immigration policies to protect its national security interests and the wages of American workers. Therefore, industries that have moved plants offshore to capitalize on lower labor costs should reconsider their approach and manufacture their products in the US. If they remain overseas, they will suffer steep tariffs imposed by the president to protect American companies from competitors. Trump has reshaped America’s trade relationships by imposing the most aggressive protectionist tariff regime since the 1930s.
America’s trading partners have reacted negatively to his tariffs, in some cases slapping retaliatory tariffs. In other cases, such as with China, it argues that the taxes portray America as an unreliable ally that prioritizes its own military and economic interests over those of its partners.
Economic nationalism in this sense is not a separate policy but the logical extension of Trump’s executive-centered governance model. What begins with immigration enforcement and tariff walls at home reverberates abroad, straining America’s alliances and eroding confidence in the multilateral institutions that have underpinned global order for decades.
Dismantling the Federal Workforce
Project 2025 argued that federal bureaucracy had grown too large and powerful, and that a strong president should modify federal procedures to make it easier to fire and make cuts to the “administrative state.”
In lockstep with the Heritage Foundation’s nationalist blueprint, Trump ordered the most significant federal workforce reduction in decades, including a hiring freeze, elimination of entire offices, and mass layoffs, particularly at the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, and the Department of Education, which lost half of its employees. The president also began treating the Department of Justice like his own law firm, allowing him to seek legal retribution against his opponents. He eliminated USAID, America’s “soft power” arm, which played a significant role in the nation’s defeat of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Using other executive orders, Trump adopted Project 2025 suggestions that America roll back environmental protections and shift to fossil fuel investments. The president dismantled environmental protections and climate policies and withdrew America from the Paris Climate Accord, diminishing the nation’s leadership on the world stage and straining its credibility. Trump argues that his orders promote American energy dominance, although his tariffs on imported materials, such as steel and aluminum, have increased the costs of many US energy projects.
Project 2025 voiced skepticism about US alliances of all stripes. Trump took steps to align the interests of his White House with the Heritage blueprint. America’s historic participation in partnerships, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the World Health Organization WHO), is also on the chopping block. Many allies consider such steps a black eye to the nation’s reputation. With an executive order, Trump withdrew the United States from the WHO, paused future funding, and recalled US personnel working in Geneva.
From the domestic administrative state to America’s global commitments, the same logic applies: it is a nationalist executive agenda that seeks to consolidate authority at home while retreating from multilateral obligations abroad.
Flooding the Zone as Political Tactics
The president legitimately complained that America historically shouldered too heavy a financial burden in the NATO defense alliance, forcing others, such as Germany, to increase their defense budgets and contributions to the coalition. However, the coolness and hostility towards NATO by Trump and Vice President JD Vance raise doubts about America’s long-term commitment to the alliance. Even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Trump’s equivocating response to Russian aggression makes NATO advocates uneasy.
The stunning speed and sweep of the president’s executive orders caught his opponents off guard. Russell Vought, a prime architect of the conservative blueprint and Trump’s current director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), secretly drafted hundreds of executive orders and memos that prepared the White House for rapid action once Trump took office. Steve Bannon, another avid Trump supporter, articulated a White House “flood the zone” strategy on the PBS Frontline show, justifying the administration’s zealous attack on the press as a crafty tactic to help win its nationalist agenda.
“The opposition party is the media,” Bannon said. “And the media can only focus on one thing at a time. All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day, we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”
In the end, the tactics of flooding the zone are not merely media management. They are central to ensuring that the broader nationalist transformation advances faster than opponents can resist.
The Risks of Executive Overreach
The president’s strategy has its advantages. By “flooding the zone” with executive orders, Trump avoids the messy and time-consuming process of pushing legislation through a Congress that is vulnerable to pressure from voters and special interests. Few presidents have accomplished as much as Trump in such a short time.
However, the strategy also has its disadvantages. One president’s executive order is another’s target. If Democrats manage to recapture the White House in a future election, a new president can easily issue an executive order to reverse Trump’s policies.
Of course, executive orders are subject to judicial review and court challenges. Numerous lawsuits challenging Trump’s immigration policies are pending in the courts. The administration has lost some of its cases, but it has scored multiple victories backing its strong executive powers by the US Supreme Court.
After Trump: What Endures
Some of his orders may backfire. Economists project the impact of the tariffs will reduce long-term GDP by about six percent and wages by about five percent, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
The administration’s policies also receive failing marks internationally. Multiple countries enacted retaliatory measures that increased food prices and created supply chain problems, which diminished the manufacturing industry that Trump purports to promote.
The long-term implications of Trump’s sweeping changes will depend on whether the president or his successors can sustain them politically or practically. Regardless of the outcomes, there’s little doubt that the president has changed America significantly and earned a reputation as “a guy who gets things done.” However, the ramifications will persist for years, for better or for worse.
Ultimately, the scope and speed of Trump’s executive agenda raise a deeper question that goes beyond his presidency. Is the United States entering an era of an authoritarian “executive state,” in which unilateral presidential actions increasingly substitute legislative consensus? For America’s allies and rivals alike, the answer will determine whether the United States remains the central pillar of the international order or retreats into a narrower, nationalist power.
What is already clear is that eight months of Trump’s leadership have rewritten the rules of American governance, and the world is now forced to consider whether this experiment will stick longer to become the new American normal.
–James O’Shea
James O’Shea is an award-winning American journalist and author. He is the past editor-in-chief of The Los Angeles Times, former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and chairman of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He is the author of three books, including The Deal from Hell, a compelling narrative about the collapse of the American newspaper industry. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.
A version of this article was originally published on September 30, 2025 in Eagle Intelligence Reports.