No other modern President has as forcefully grabbed control of the U.S. government as Donald Trump. Within weeks of moving back into the White House, he fired prosecutors and inspectors general who might check his power, dismissed thousands of federal workers, stripped away global aid programs, gutted the Department of Education, and used wartime powers to send Venezuelan men from the U.S. to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He then stepped over Congress to make erratic tariff announcements that have shaken the global economy and baffled business leaders and voters. When he hasn’t been trying to steer American culture to the right by pressuring companies and universities to shut down diversity programs, he’s rattling U.S. allies by threatening to invade Greenland and end U.S. support for Ukraine. The rest of his term will show just how much he can bend the country—and the world—before it breaks.
Bennett is a TIME senior correspondent