Writing History … tracking Trump’s actions

The deluge of information about what Donald Trump is doing is overwhelming, making it difficult to step away from the chaos and assess the overall impact or underlying intent. Fortunately, the New York Times has been tracking the actions of Donald Trump’s administration since January 20, 2025, posting and categorizing each day’s new events.

I decided to review them – yes, all of them – and do my own categorization according to the priorities and plans of Project 2025 that I wrote about in early January. I called those plans frightening.

The source for my list of “frightening objectives” is E.T. Parker’s website What Does Project 2025 Say? Parker is a “data scientist who has read and analyzed every word of Project 2025.” When he wrote about the priorities of Trump’s administration as laid out in the Project 2025 document and the plan to operationalize that document, Parker included specific references to the text.

Dismantle the government is the first objective E.T. Parker highlights, “removing experts from positions of power and installing Trump loyalists whose allegiance is to the Project 2025 agenda, not to the country.” Note the references to ‘experts’ and ‘loyalists’, as if one is somehow equivalent to the other.

As we’ve learned, dismantling government also includes the intent to drastically cut the cost of the federal government. Below I’ve noted over 60 actions to date (March 19) that line up against this objective beginning with the establishment of DOGE and continuing on to firings, forced leaves, retirement incentives, budget slashing, and the elimination of entire departments.

Using a ‘fire hose approach’ DOGE and the cabinet members who lead various departments are proceeding at a pace that no normal organization would. Not surprisingly, they are making mistakes. More significantly, it seems that doing things quickly is intended to confuse and paralyze not only the public service but also the public itself.

On January 20, his first day in office, Trump froze most hiring across government. I get that. No point hiring more people when you’re intending to reduce the size of the federal government. He also instructed the AG to find political bias in the Federal government. What does ‘political bias’ mean? How would you assess such bias? Is it the belief of those behind Project 2025, that civil servants aren’t capable of applying professional skills and expertise without being politically motivated? Perhaps, it is the authors of this document who are incapable of such professionalism.

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Accordingly, [Russell] Vought writes, “it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies, not their own.” (Project 2025, Section 1, page 52, paragraph 2.) In the same paragraph, Vought writes: “Federal employees are often ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people—but with one another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government “of, by, and for” the people.” As if a democratic government would not also be ‘of, by, and for the people.’ As if federal employees do not consider the needs of the people they serve.

What actions since January 20, 2025 fall under the umbrella of ‘dismantling the government’? Here’s my cut using the NY Times’ list of actions organized primarily by date.

I’ve colour-coded Trump’s actions to help readers consider them – and remember, this is only one category of actions I’ve tabulated. RED is firing; YELLOW is shut down; BLUE is overall planning and execution (ie: DOGE and Co); GREEN is budget cuts (recognizing that almost everything is intended to cut the overall cost of government); PURPLE is other. BLACK is revenge, insults, or actions that could pave the way toward authoritarianism.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many actions have a secondary or tertiary intent. For example, firing inspectors general is also intended to remove those whose duties require them to act as a second set of eyes on the decisions that are made.

• Established DOGE (Jan 20)
• Instructed the AG to find political bias in the Federal government (Jan 20)
• Froze most hiring across the government (Jan 20)
• Made it easier for the president to fire federal employees (Jan 20)
• Fired four people from presidential councils (Jan 21)
• Fired more than a dozen inspectors general (Jan 24)
• Said that FEMA should be shut down (Jan 24)
• Placed dozens of USAID officials on leave (Jan 27)
• Paused federal grants and loans (Jan 27); rescinded (Jan 29)
• Tried to entice millions of federal workers to resign (Jan 28); tried again (Jan 30)
• Planned possible FBI purge (Jan 31) – might also be a revenge play
• Removed 1000s of Federal Govt web pages (Jan 31)
• Pushed out a Treasury official for denying access to Elon Musk (Jan 31) 
• Punished USAID officials for denying access to Elon Musk (Feb 1)
• Said USAID was run by “radical lunatics” (Feb 2); Moved to dismantle USAID (Feb 3); Forced most USAID employees to go on leave by Feb 7 (Feb 3); 
• Offered NSA workers the option to resign (Feb 5)
• Planned to reduce USAID from 10K employees to 290 (Feb 6); Called for the closure of U.S.A.I.D. and accused the agency of rampant corruption (Feb 7)
• Said that more than 40K federal employees had accepted resignation program (Feb 6)
• Directed Musk to examine spending at Defense and Education departments (Feb 7)
• Eliminate the Federal Executive Institute (Feb 10)
• Ordered plans for ‘large-scale’ federal work force cuts and expanded Elon Musk’s power (Feb 11)
• Fired the inspector general for USAID (Feb 11); fired another 2000 employees at USAID (Feb 23)
• Made Elon Musk’s financial disclosure report to the White House confidential (Feb 11)
• Began terminating probationary employees at the General Services Administration (Feb 12)
• Laid off dozens of people from the Office of Personnel Management (Feb 13); and laid off more than 1000 employees at the DVA (Feb 13)
• Fired, then unfired, federal employees responsible for the readiness of America’s nuclear arsenal (Feb 14)
• Accelerated plans for widespread work force cuts across multiple federal agencies (Feb 14)
• Shrank funds for ‘navigators’ who help Americans enroll in Obamacare health insurance plans (Feb 14)
• Ordered agencies to make public all “wasteful spending” (Feb 18)
• Gutted the National Institutes of Health and training programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Feb 18)
• Ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for cuts (Feb 19); planned mass firings at Pentagon (Feb 21)
• Moved to shrink Inter-American Foundation, United States African Development Foundation, Presidio Trust and the United States Institute of Peace (Feb 19)
• Exploited loopholes to continue to freeze government funding despite court orders (Feb 19)
• Fired health inspectors at some border stations (Feb 19)
• Laid off about 6,700 employees at the Internal Revenue Service (Feb 20)
• Announced a staff cut of 84 percent at the office that funds recovery from disasters (part of FEMA) (Feb 20)
• Planned mass firings at the C.I.A. (Feb 20)
• Fired 243 probationary employees at the Transportation Security Administration (Feb 20)
• Considered plans to consolidate the U.S.P.S. into the Commerce Department (Feb 21)
• Planned to relocate 1,500 F.B.I. agents and support staff members to field offices (Feb 21)
• Terminated about 90 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development grants and contracts (Feb 25)
• Empowered Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative, DOGE, to scrutinize payments by agencies (Feb 26)
• Demanded that agencies prepare to close offices and relocate employees outside the Washington region (Feb 27)
• Said the Social Security Administration would reduce its head count by more than 12 percent as part of President Trump’s initiative to drastically cut the federal work force (Feb 28)
• Cut a General Services Administration unit created to digitally modernize the government (Mar 1)
• Fired dozens of technology specialists at the General Services Administration (Mar 3)
• Marked hundreds of federal properties around the country for potential sale (Mar 4); on Mar 5 took down this list
• Planned to cut the I.R.S. work force in half (Mar 4)
• Proposed privatizing Amtrak, which has long been under scrutiny from Republican presidents (Mar 5)
• Planned to cut the Veterans Affairs workforce by more than 80,000 people (Mar 5)
• Planned to close a dozen consulates and cut staffing overseas (Mar 6)
• Began firing newly hired employees at the C.I.A. (Mar 6)
• Promised not to ‘touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid’ (Mar 9)
• Fired about 19 people from NASA, including its chief scientist (Mar 10)
• Announced that 83 percent of the programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development would be canceled (Mar 10)
• Told U.S.A.I.D. employees to shred or burn classified and personal records (Mar 11)
• Implemented major cuts at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, closing offices and reducing staff (Mar 12)
• Reached agreement with U.S. Postal Service to help in ‘identifying and achieving further efficiencies’ (Mar 13)
• Ordered the dismantling of seven federal agencies, including the one that oversees Voice of America (Mar 14); subsequently put all employees on administrative leave
• Said the Social Security Administration would stop allowing changes made by phone (Mar 18)
• Considered shutting down the H.I.V. prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Mar 19)
• Changed the Department of Government Efficiency’s site code, making it harder to fact-check its claims (Mar 19)

Just one category. And it’s only Day 60!

Regardless of whether you think the US federal government is inefficient and too costly, this approach to making profound change in such a short period of time runs the risk of making government or of dysfunction at a level that jeopardizes many, many Americans.

Beyond that, hundreds of thousands of people have been affected – through firings or administrative leaves. This level of chaos is unsustainable.

Next up … the goal of deporting more than 11 million immigrants.

FOR MORE ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION – YES, I PROMISE TO CONTINUE FEATURING HISTORICAL FICTION –  FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY. There’s a SUBSCRIBE function on the right hand side of the page. 

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.