We’ll be recapping what you need to know every Friday morning for the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Get more updates and analysis in the
It’s now been a month since President Trump was sworn in, and the firehose of information coming from the administration continued this week, including:
Trump reshaping the U.S. position toward Ukraine, more civil service firings, more resignations amid allegations of a quid pro quo between Trump’s Justice Department and New York Mayor Eric Adams, confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI director, another handful of executive orders, the courts putting some speedbumps in the Trump administration’s way and the White House posting on X a fake Time magazine cover of Trump adorning a crown with the words, “LONG LIVE THE KING.”
1. Trump blames Ukraine for Russia’s invasion: Ukraine President Zelenskyy expressed frustration about being left out of U.S. negotiations with Russia in Saudi Arabia about the war. He said Trump is living in a “disinformation bubble,” and Trump then lashed out, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and blamed the country for “starting” the war with Russia (when it was Russia that invaded Ukraine three years ago). All of Trump’s accusations echo Russian propaganda.
2. Who is the top DOGE? A court filing about Elon Musk’s informal Department of Government Efficiency did not acknowledge him as its head. But DOGE was Musk’s idea, and Trump said Musk is in charge of it: “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge,” he said in Miami this week.
DOGE, now in its third week of finding drastic cuts to make to the federal government, continued to make abrupt firings, embedded itself at key agencies and signaled there’s more to come. (The head of the Social Security Administration resigned after a dispute with DOGE over access to recipient information.)
Musk has claimed big savings and even floated the idea of $5,000 “dividend” checks to people, but the math on Musk’s group’s claimed savings doesn’t add up, according to an NPR investigation. A lot of what DOGE is doing is provocative, and Trump is well aware of optics. Speaking of Trump’s attention to optics, that was highlighted earlier in the week when Trump did laps in the presidential limo at the Daytona 500 and flew Air Force One around the stadium.
3. The Eric Adams saga: The Justice Department cited in court that the New York mayor’s ability to curtail illegal immigration in the city would be hampered if he were to be prosecuted. Deputy Acting Attorney General Emil Bove said in a memo that letting Adams off the hook for now was not about the merits of the charges against him, but that the “pending prosecution unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration.”
Prosecutors at the department resigned last week over this. This week, four deputy mayors in Adams’ office also stepped down, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will not use her powers to oust him from office, but will push for legislation to put more guardrails on the mayor’s independence.
Source: www.npr.org