Eight chaotic days shake Trump's grip on the presidency
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President Trump began the week of his 79th birthday reeling from his explosive public breakup with Elon Musk.
- He ended it with tanks in the capital, Marines in Los Angeles, a Democratic senator dragged away in handcuffs, thousands of protests planned nationwide, and a new war in the Middle East.
Why it matters: In a year already brimming with "holy sh*t" moments, the past eight days have brought unprecedented new intensity, stakes and challenges to Trump's presidency.
Zoom in: America is on edge.
- Trump became the first president since the Civil Rights Era to federalize the National Guard without a governor's consent — sending troops to L.A. to quash protests sparked by his administration's immigration raids.
- Democrats, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have accused Trump of blatantly defying the Constitution and pouring gasoline on the fire by deploying 700 Marines on domestic soil.
- When Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) tried to confront Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference Thursday, he was forcibly removed and handcuffed.
Between the lines: Trump officials want this fight, eager to flex executive power and frame Democrats as defenders of undocumented immigrants and violent agitators. But the backlash is threatening to spiral beyond the White House's control.
- Millions of people are expected to join "No Kings" protests in nearly 1,800 cities on Saturday — the largest single-day demonstrations against Trump since his return to power.
- Expect an extraordinary split-screen as Trump celebrates not only his birthday, but a massive military parade in Washington that he's dreamed of since his first term.
- "For those people that want to protest, they're going to be met with very big force," Trump warned this week, dismissing the demonstrators as "people that hate our country."
Zoom out: With unrest boiling over at home, Israel's unprecedented attack on Iran suddenly threatened to unravel Trump's crowning foreign policy achievement from his first term: "No new wars."
- Trump had publicly urged Israel not to strike Iran while he actively pursued a nuclear deal with the Iranians, and even assured allies that the U.S. would not participate in the operation.
- Israel did it anyway — bombing nuclear sites, assassinating top generals and scientists, and sabotaging missile facilities in one of the most sophisticated covert strikes in the history of the Middle East.
The intrigue: Trump now claims that the wildly successful operation — which he told Axios used "great American equipment" — could make it easier to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. But his MAGA base is deeply uneasy.
- Iran has launched retaliatory missile attacks against Israel, which U.S. forces helped the intercept. Oil prices have surged, and the threat of Iran targeting U.S. assets in the region remains very real.
- Opposition to the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan helped fuel Trump's political rise — and many of his most loyal supporters view any new Middle East entanglement as a betrayal of that legacy.
- "[D]rop Israel. Let them fight their own wars," MAGA isolationist Tucker Carlson wrote in a post accusing the U.S. of complicity in the attack. "What happens next will define Donald Trump's presidency."
The bottom line: The pace of news in the Trump era, both at home and abroad, makes it exceedingly difficult to distinguish the chaotic from the consequential.
- But the past eight days — from the excommunication of Elon Musk to the start of a dangerous new era in the Middle East — reshaped the presidency in ways that won't easily be undone.
