New year's blitz reveals Trump's limitless view of power
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Illustration: Maura Kearns/Axios
The first week of 2026 left little ambiguity about what President Trump thinks of power — or whether there are any limits on his. Just listen to him and top aide Stephen Miller.
- Trump to The New York Times, when asked if there are any checks on his global ambitions: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."
- Miller to CNN's Jake Tapper: "[Y]ou can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power."
Why it matters: That worldview manifested itself in one of the most frenetic, forceful starts to a year in recent memory. Through it all, the White House barreled forward with swagger, speed and open disdain for guardrails.
Zoom in: Americans awoke last Saturday to the stunning news that the U.S. military had attacked Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a daring overnight raid.
- Condemnation at the U.N. Security Council fell on deaf ears: Trump raised the threat of further interventions against Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Iran and even Greenland, sparking a diplomatic crisis with NATO.
- Determined to enforce the "Donroe Doctrine" of American supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. seized five oil tankers accused of violating sanctions — including a Russian-flagged vessel.
When the Senate voted to rein in Trump's military authority in Venezuela, the White House rejected the premise outright: "The War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law," Vice President Vance said.
- "I don't need international law," Trump told the Times. "I'm not looking to hurt people."
- On Friday, less than a week after Maduro's arrest, Trump hosted Big Oil executives at the White House and urged them to invest $100 billion in Venezuela, which he suggested the U.S. may "run" for years. It's still not quite clear what that means.
Zoom out: Back home, Trump ushered in the new year with a domestic show of force, deploying 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis for what the Department of Homeland Security called the largest immigration operation ever.
- During that surge a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, Renée Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE officer — triggering mass protests nationwide.
- Trump officials accused Good of trying to run over the officer in an act of "domestic terrorism." Federal authorities have blocked Minnesota from investigating — and Vance is claiming the officer is "protected by absolute immunity."
The big picture: Maduro and Minnesota largely swallowed this week's news cycle, obscuring a host of other norm-shattering moments that passed with little sustained scrutiny.
- On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, the White House published an official government web page falsely claiming the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol was "peaceful."
- Trump used Truth Social to call for a $600 billion increase in Pentagon spending, announce sweeping interventions in housing and financial markets, and order crackdowns on how defense contractors and institutional investors spend their money.
- His health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., upended decades of public health policy by rewriting the federal vaccine schedule to recommend fewer shots for children.
The bottom line: Trump is a master of flooding the zone. Now in the second year of his second presidency, his strategy is more focused on domination than distraction.
