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 this week:

1. 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."
2. 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 drove one of the most frenetic, forceful starts to a year. Through it all, the White House barreled forward with swagger, speed and open disdain for guardrails, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

🔬 Zoom in: Americans awoke last Saturday to stunning news that the U.S. military had attacked Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a daring overnight raid.

• Condemnation at the UN 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. Vice President Vance said, "The War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law."

• "I don't need international law," Trump told the Times. "I'm not looking to hurt people."

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, Renee Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE officer — triggering mass protests nationwide.

📰 The big picture: Maduro and Minnesota swallowed this week's news cycle, obscuring other norm-shattering moments.

• 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 Capitol was "peaceful."
• Trump used Truth Social to call for a $600 billion Pentagon spending increase, announce sweeping interventions in housing and financial markets, and order crackdowns on defense contractors and institutional investors.
• 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.

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MAGA is pressing the Trump administration to write a new chapter in America's expansionist history — one that adds territory and influence as part of a new Western empire, Axios' Tal Axelrod reports.

• Why it matters: On its face, MAGA's imperial turn is a head-spinning reversal for a movement built around hostility to "endless wars" in the Middle East.
• But reframed as hemispheric dominance, the right's expansionist impulse fits a civilizational worldview: America as enforcer of the West, bending weaker nations to its will.

🎙️ In the days after President Trump's stunning capture of Nicolás Maduro, even some of MAGA's loudest non-interventionists began casting strategic lands in America's hemisphere — Colombia, Cuba, Greenland — as ripe for colonization.

• "How can you get more 'America First' than Manifest Destiny 2.0?" "War Room" host Steve Bannon told NBC News.
• "Expansion is the American way. It has been since literally the first moments of its existence," wrote The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh.
• "[I]t's up to us to keep pushing for the orderly governance of the world via American imperialism," MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich said this week on Tucker Carlson's podcast.

Yes, the populist right remains deeply wary of foreign quagmires, especially in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

• But MAGA sees places like Greenland and Venezuela as categorically different: The Western Hemisphere is America's sphere of influence. Shows of force in the U.S. backyard should not be frowned upon, especially when rivals like China and Russia seek their own regional footholds.

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President Trump is considering options for supporting the protests in Iran and weakening the regime, two U.S. officials tell Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Why it matters: Those discussions are happening as protests intensify and the death toll rises — and after Trump said publicly he was willing to use military force if the Iranian regime killed protesters.

A U.S. official said the discussions included military strikes, but most options presented to the president are "not kinetic."

⚡ The latest: Massive protests swept Iran yesterday for the third straight night. The country remains under an internet blackout as security forces intensify the crackdown, according to reports from Tehran and U.S. and Israeli officials.

• Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios the true death toll is likely several times higher than the 116 reported Saturday by human rights group HRANA.

Iran has blamed Trump for fueling the protests and accused the U.S. and Israel of importing "rioters."

• President Masoud Pezeshkian warned today that if the U.S. attacks, Iran will hit U.S. bases and Israel in response.

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Appeals court judges chosen by President Trump in his first term are reliably reversing rulings by district court judges in his second —133-12 in 2025, or 92% of the time, a New York Times tally finds.

• Why it matters: These judges form "a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda … clearing the way for his policies and gradually eroding a perception early last year that the legal system was thwarting his efforts to amass presidential power," The Times notes.

🧮 By the numbers: The Times analysis found that district courts ruled for Trump policies 25% of the time last year … appeals courts, 51% … and the Supreme Court, 88%

• Trump appointees voted pro-Trump 92% of the time … other GOP appointees, 68% … and Democratic appointees, 27%.

🔮 Trump's long game: Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chair who guided Trump's first-term judicial picks under the banner of "originalism," told The Times: "The Supreme Court's docket is so tiny, and there's so little attention paid to the appellate courts … Trump has filled them with these superstar judges. They're not buffoons. They're very effective. And they are going to be there for a long time."

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Thousands marched in Minneapolis yesterday to protest the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer there and the shooting of two people in Portland, Ore. Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful.

• The protest was one of hundreds planned for towns and cities across the country over the weekend, AP reports.

By the numbers: More Americans (44%) support protests against ICE than support ICE itself (39%), Axios' Josephine Walker writes from a YouGov survey taken the day Good was killed.

• Just 27% said the agency's tactics were "about right" compared to 51% who called them "too forceful." Another 10% said they were "not forceful enough."

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Americans are drinking less — and brewers, from industry giants to local craft producers, are feeling the squeeze.

• Beer is losing market share to sweet seltzers and weed products, especially among younger consumers. Plus, America's craft beer boom is now a bubble — and set to burst as demand wanes and independent brewers shutter, Axios Denver's John Frank reports.

The latest: Constellation Brands, which owns Corona and Modelo Especial, said last week its sales have taken a hit.

• Constellation's beer portfolio has long benefited from strong demand among Hispanic consumers, who account for nearly half of the company's U.S. beer sales. But Hispanic consumers have pulled back, Reuters reports.

What's next: Constellation is banking on a demand lift from the World Cup in North America in June and July, an event that over-indexes in the Hispanic community and in social gatherings that favor beer.

• Another bright spot for both large and small brewers has been the rising popularity of non-alcoholic beers. They now the second-largest beer category worldwide, behind lagers.

Twenty-somethings are trading vapes for cigarettes.

• "Several studies suggest that young smokers were drawn into nicotine addiction through vaping when it was popular. This cohort then abandoned vapes when they became unfashionable and turned to cigarettes. Vaping, then, was a kind of gateway to Marlboro Lights and American Spirits," The Wall Street Journal's Katie Roiphe writes.

📉 The big picture: Youth e-cigarette use dropped to its lowest level in a decade last year, and overall nicotine consumption — among adults and teens — has also fallen. Both are huge public health wins.

• "[B]ut in certain circles cigarettes seem to have regained a kind of cachet … It seems that in this era of wellness obsession, of kale salads and Pilates, people who are recklessly hedonistic, who choose pleasure over health, still have a certain kind of glamour."

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Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who was a founding member of the Grateful Dead, has died. He was 78.

• "It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir," a statement on his Instagram yesterday said. "He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues."

🌼 Weir helped create the sound of the San Francisco 1960s counterculture and kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, AP reports.

• He wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including "Sugar Magnolia," "One More Saturday Night" and "Mexicali Blues."

After Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, Weir became the Dead's most recognizable face. He kept playing for decades with projects that kept band's music and legendary fan base alive, including Dead & Company.

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