It’s been a little more than a week since President Donald Trump has been back in the Oval Office, and the pace of change for the country so far has been head spinning, even by Trump standards.
Trump has signed more than 300 executive orders and had six new Cabinet secretaries confirmed. On top of the executive orders, he has issued official directives, agency memos and “Truths” posted to his own social media platform, including one threatening 100% tariffs on Colombia if the country refused to repatriate its newly deported citizens (Colombia relented).
Even impromptu comments during a press gaggle — like the president’s suggestion about Gaza that he’d like to “just clean out the whole thing” — upended decades of American foreign policy in a single breath. What does it all add up to, you may be wondering?
“The golden age of America has most definitely begun,” new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. Ask nearly anyone else in Washington, even some of the president’s supporters, and you’ll get another description: Absolute chaos. But that is the whole point.
From his very first campaign events in 2015, the president has promised to overhaul the nation’s capital. He swore he’d “drain the swamp,” sack the cronies, slash federal spending and otherwise stick it to the establishment. But arcane rules, veteran Republican lawmakers like the late U.S. Sen. John McCain and GOP institutionalists like then-Speaker Paul Ryan made it harder than Trump seemed to ever anticipate the first time around.
But four years out of office seems to have prepared Trump to come into the White House supremely ready for the fight this time around. By Day 1, plans were already drafted and memos were ready to go. Surrounded by loyalists and a GOP Congress ready to grease the wheels, the dizzying speed of Trump’s new America should surprise no one. He’s promised it all along.
And for many who voted for him last year, this week is exactly why they sent him back to Washington.
Among the most sweeping changes Trump ordered in his first week back were a freeze on federal hiring, a freeze on American foreign aid and, on Monday of this week, a 5 p.m. memo to federal agencies to pause all federal grants and loans everywhere in the country. By late Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge had blocked the freeze on grants and loans, for now.
“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” wrote Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vaeth estimated that the order would affect $3 trillion in spending, which would amount to many billions here in Georgia. But without details from the White House or guidance from the OMB, even lawmakers scrambled Tuesday morning to find out which projects and programs in the state could be affected.
One possibility: A $6.6 billion federal loan awarded to electric carmaker Rivian in the waning days of the Biden administration to build a massive, but delayed, factory planned for Rutledge outside of Atlanta. That seems Green New Deal-ish enough to satisfy the requirement from the OMB, but only time will tell.
Other affected federal spending in Georgia could include partnerships and aid to colleges, hospitals, nonprofits and local governments. Which ones? As of Tuesday, again, nobody could say.
“The President’s suspension of Federal grants for Georgia threatens chaos,” Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said in a statement. “This erratic decision risks serious damage to health care, education, public safety, and local governments across our state.”
One agency already affected in other ways is the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Wednesday of last week, The Associated Press reported that the acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had directed the CDC and other public health agencies to stop most external communications unless approved by a Trump appointee.
Other Georgia agencies likely won’t know how or if they’re affected by the new orders until they see it on the news. On Monday morning, newly installed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke to reporters for the first time as he walked up the steps of the Pentagon and said he’s looking forward to focusing on making the military “mission ready.” Then he said this:
“Every moment that I’m here, I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, in Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers.” By “Fort Benning,” of course, Hegseth was talking about the newly renamed Fort Moore in Columbus. Hegseth and Trump have both been vocal about their anger at the military’s decision to change the names of bases named for Confederate generals, including Fort Benning.
How stripping the honor from hometown Columbus heroes, the late Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia, in favor of Henry Benning, who urged secession so the South could continue its slave trade, would make any unit more “mission ready” is a mystery. But Hegseth thought enough about it to include in his first remarks at the Pentagon.
No actions from the president have been more immediately visible in Georgia than his direction to step up immigration enforcement actions and local arrests. Trump had said he would start the process by arresting gang members, murderers and other undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records. But in Georgia, news came over the weekend that federal agents had arrested a father attending church with his family in Tucker and a mother of five represented by a Gainesville attorney. Other arrests happened in Savannah and along Buford Highway.
The one thing we know about all of this is that eventually there will be unintended consequences. Among the programs that Marco Rubio halted Friday in his freeze on all foreign aid were overseas counterterrorism and narcotics interdiction efforts.
The federal hiring freeze will most certainly include vacant jobs meant to help people in Georgia and North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene and the multiple hurricanes before Helene that South Georgians were still recovering from.
The chaos it inflicts in the nation’s Capitol certainly won’t bother the president. But the chaos it’s creating around the country, including in Georgia, should be everyone’s concern.
Editor’s note: Cox Enterprises, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, owns about a 3% stake in Rivian.
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