Judges block Musk's efforts to slash federal spending

WASHINGTON — At the start of the week, President Donald Trump warned ominously that the U.S. will retake the Panama Canal or “something very powerful is going to happen.”

By week’s end, he announced that he was killing off a prior mandate for government to buy paper straws, the environmentally friendly sipping utensil that dissolves “disgustingly” in the mouth, he wrote on his social media site.

The two pronouncements bookended a frenetic seven-day period in which Trump also made himself head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with creative sway over performances, signed an order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and cheered on Elon Musk while a cadre of engineers swept into federal agencies to cut staff and programs with an aim to downsize government.

Actions are coming at so dizzying a pace that it can be tough to track what Trump has done and what he's turned around and undone.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump said that he would send U.S. troops into Gaza, if need be, to stabilize the bombed-out territory. He backtracked two days later in a social media post.

The president imposed 25% tariffs on imports from two U.S. allies, Canada and Mexico on Saturday, Feb. 1. Two days later, he paused the tariffs for a full month.

A 25-year-old staff member working with Musk resigned Thursday after being found to have made racist comments online and was rehired the next day.

The Denali — or rather, Mt. McKinley-size stack of executive orders gushing from the White House span so many governmental and cultural fronts that disoriented Democrats appear unsure how to fight back.

Last month, Senate Democrats had planned a news conference devoted to Trump's blanket pardons of those who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. But they scrubbed it focus on a newer outrage: a freeze on trillions of dollars in federal spending.

“We are figuring it out,” Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview. “We don’t have the perfect plan yet.”

A strategy at the start of Trump’s first term was to “flood the zone with s---,” as Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist, memorably described efforts to keep the news media off balance.