It has been 4 weeks since Trump took office for the second time.

My views coming into this:

Trump is a bad man. The current iteration of the Republican party, at least at the federal level, seems very populist and right-wing.
The United States political system seems to be in a genuinely unprecedented state, see my previous analysis of this from about a year ago here.
The current style of US politics seems to be: elect a charismatic president based on almost a cult of personality; enact policies via executive orders and the budget bills, rather than normal congressional bills; then when a new president comes in, sign a flurry of executive orders, including executive orders that reverse the policies of the previous guy. Obama and Biden both followed this pattern, and I don’t think Trump is too execptional in this regard.
Democracies die all the time.
On a more personal level, I’m observing a very high level of backlash against trans people in the current executive administration and legislature. So even if Trump happily serves his four years and passes things onto the next president without causing any further damage to institutions, he could inflict a large amount of hurt on trans people. Even a president who acts completely legally and within the legal bounds of his office can still do an immense amount of harm.

Executive orders

Consider the first 4 weeks of a president’s term, i.e. from Jan 20 to Feb 10. I’ve arbitrarily chosen this as it’s a nice round number of weeks and it covers most of the Trump second presidency to date (I’m writing this on Feb 13).

In the first 4 weeks of the presidency:

Trump 2.0: 63 executive orders (Wiki).
Trump 1.0: 12 executive orders (Wiki).
Biden: 29 executive orders (Wiki).
Obama: 14 executive orders (Wiki).
George W. Bush: 2 executive orders ([Wiki])(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_George_W._Bush#2001).
Clinton: 6 executive orders (Wiki.

So the number of executive orders in Trump 2.0 is high, but not as high as you might think - it’s only about 2x the level of his predecessor. It looks like the number of executive orders has increased over time for all presidents. Moreover, if I were writing this at the start of the Biden presidency or the Obama presidency, I would still be saying “Wow, these presidents have signed more executive orders than their immediate predecessors!”

So yes, Trump is signing lots of executive orders, but this seems to be part of an increasing trend rather than something unusual about Trump per se.

How is the legislature going?

In my previous blog article, I highlighted a trend that I find quite worrying: Congress is passing very few bills. This is, in large part, due to the Senate fillibuster (which essentially requires any bill, other than budget bills, to have a supermajority in the Senate to pass).

In the current (119th) Congress, the Republicans control both houses. But they don’t have a supermajority in the Senate. So I wonder if this trend of Congressional inaction will continue.

At the time of writing, the current Congress has passed one bill - Senate Bill 5, “A bill to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes.” Of course! This passed along mostly partisan lines, though some Democrats voted in favour (source..
By this early point in the 111th Congress (2009-2010), Congress had passed 2 or 3 bills, depending on when you draw the line corresponding to “this early point” (source).
Likewise, the 103rd Congress (1993-1995) had passed 1 bill as far as I can tell.

So it’s probably just too early to say whether Congress is doing anything differently during this term.

Is Trump ignoring the judiciary? Is this unusual?

In the past few days, there has been lots of news about conflict between the executive and the courts.

I think this article by Jaclyn Diaz at NPR gives an excellent and level-headed summary:

If the executive decides to ignore the court’s authority, this could end as a constitutional crisis.
The executive has not (yet) decided this. Professor Amanda Frost is reported as saying: “[…] as of today, at this moment, the executive branch has not taken the position that it can violate court orders or that it does not need to comply with court orders.”
Trump is reported as saying that he will comply with court rulings and simply file appeals.

The authority of the president has changed over history. At various points in recent decades, the power of the president has expanded or contracted for various reasons.

However, this article (which is under a paywall, which I find silly and insulting given the topic of the article) reports Professor Cristina Rodríguez, a legal scholar, as making some salient points:

Professor Rodríguez confirms that there aren’t really any examples in the modern era (post-Lincoln) of a president outright ignoring court orders.

Professor Rodríguez also gives two key dynamics to watch in the next few weeks:

“[W]hether high-level officials are on the brink of actually defying court orders, because I think that that is a step toward autocracy where officials don’t recognize the law as constraining their behavior […] it seems like some officials are stepping close to that line, but they haven’t declared their intention to defy court orders.”
“[W]hat kinds of arguments the President and high-level officials are making about their power […]” for example “the view that the President is not bound by the decisions that Congress makes to appropriate money to fund government programs or agencies” because “you might even call it a suspension of the Constitution, because it treats Congress not as a coequal branch with powers that the executive must abide by but as a body that issues suggestions to the executive branch”.

Is Trump planning a coup?

Informally, I’ve heard talk suggesting that Trump might be planning a coup. However, I think this is going too far.

A Metaculus forecasts: 146 forecasters have an aggregate forecast of 2.6% for Trump retaining supreme executive power beyond his current term (source). Note that this includes non-coup outcomes, e.g. if the election is postponed or if there is a several day delay in inaugurating the next president for whatever reason. The question also hasn’t received any comments addressing the current conflict with the courts, meaning the forecast might be slightly outdated (even by a few weeks).

A constitutional crisis (the president asserting authority that is usually held by other branches of government) might mean a signficant change to the constitutional order. This isn’t necessarily the same as the end to democracy or an outright coup, although it feels like a step in that direction.

So all said, while the current conflict with the courts might end up as a constitutional crisis (or it might not), I haven’t really seen any evidence that Trump or other Republicans are planning an outright coup.