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Power Play
(Editor’s note: This morning Axios AM published the piece below. They offer an interesting summary of Trump 2.0. More importantly they “Go deeper: with “The most unprecedented presidency in 250 years.” Take time and click to read the deeper piece.)
President Trump seethed when the Supreme Court stripped away his unilateral tariff authority, the first real check on his presidency.
- Then he set out to impose his will on every remaining vector of American power — smashing norms and shrugging off Congress in a historic, 14-day show of executive force, Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.
Why it matters: Over the past two weeks, Trump launched a massive Middle East war, blacklisted the hottest AI company on the planet, ordered new global tariffs, and presided over the biggest media merger in two decades.
- He did it all unilaterally — without passing a single law, and without pretending he needed to. Axios’ Zachary Basu narrates this epic fortnight:
🚢 The tariffs: On Feb. 20, hours after the Supreme Court ruling, Trump imposed a new 10% global tariff under a separate emergency law — daring the courts to stop him again.
- By sidestepping the court’s ruling rather than accepting it, Trump sent an unmistakable message: No institution — not Congress, not the judiciary — would constrain his ability to reshape the global economy.
🎥 The merger: On Feb. 26, Netflix walked away from the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery — handing Trump allies Larry and David Ellison control of CNN, HBO and Hollywood’s two most storied studios.
- Paramount’s David Ellison privately assured Trump officials last year that he would make sweeping changes to CNN, a network despised by the president, The Wall Street Journal reported.
- The Ellisons’ emerging media empire — CBS, TikTok and soon CNN — gives Trump allies unprecedented influence on what Americans watch, read and scroll.
🤖 The blacklist: On Feb. 27, Trump ordered every federal agency to stop doing business with Anthropic after the $380 billion AI startup refused to give the Pentagon unfettered access to its technology.
- The Pentagon then designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a label typically reserved for adversarial foreign companies, and one that a former Trump AI adviser called “attempted corporate murder.”
- “I fired Anthropic like dogs,” Trump told Politico.
🪖 The war: On Feb. 28, Trump did what no president before him had dared — launch a full military assault on an Iranian regime that has tormented the United States since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
- Some U.S. officials have been careful not to call it a “war” — a label that connotes congressional approval — or admit that “regime change” is the goal. The president hasn’t bothered with either pretense.
- Trump told Axios yesterday that he must be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader just as he was in Venezuela, where interim President Delcy Rodríguez has become a compliant conduit for U.S. interests.
- In the same interview with Axios’ Barak Ravid, Trump demanded that Israel’s president pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — seeking to simultaneously pick Iran’s next leader and shield his war partner from criminal prosecution.
💡 The big picture: Trump has spent his second term systematically testing how much power a president can seize without Congress, the courts or public opinion stopping him. The answer, so far: almost limitless.
- Trump has signed fewer laws than any modern president at this stage — because he doesn’t need them. Executive orders, military force and the bully pulpit have proven more efficient.
- Trump’s advisers say he’s content using unilateral powers, and congressional Republicans — with rare exceptions — have cheered him on at every turn.
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