Today marks one month of President Trump in office. Let's try to take stock, shall we? Here are the things we're noticing.

The pace. This is the most obvious and the most frequently-noted one: the pace of reform has been breathtaking. The AFPI and Project 2025 people did their jobs. People, particularly outside the right, have noted a resemblance to Steve Bannon's first term strategy of "flooding the zone" with so much PR cacophony that adversaries would be paralyzed. But there's a notable difference: for the most part, the communications are not just press releases or tweets. They are actual policy changes. The President didn't just rail about foreign aid—USAID was actually dismantled. Deportations really are occurring. The Wall really is getting built. The pace of actual policy change has been furious, the fastest we can remember since we have watched American politics.

Classical Republicanism. For all the talk (which is grounded in reality) of a new Party and a new coalition, the actual policymaking has very much been in line with classical Republicanism. The big exception has been tariffs, but these tariffs are, at present, more talked-about than implemented. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico were averted at the last second; the tariffs on China are real, but tariffs on China are bipartisan at this point, and they are part of a broader and longer trade negotiation. In other fields, the focus has been very much on cutting government and cutting regulation, in large part thanks to DOGE, but not only: think of David Sacks's AI office or OMB's gutting of CFPB. There hasn't been an "Infrastructure Week" even though this time Trump would have the staff and party discipline to make it a non-joke. There hasn't been talk of industrial policy. The talk about the upcoming tax bill is largely focused on how to pay for huge tax cuts, and the answer seems to be, beyond DOGE's yet-to-materialize efficiency savings, by cutting social programs. Yes, the President has said he doesn't want to cut Medicaid, but Congressional Republicans still want to and it's not clear how that will shake out in the end. Some Republicans want something ambitious on family policy, but they haven't gotten visible support from the White House.

The All-Star Team. Elon, who, for all his foibles, remains objectively the most successful entrepreneur and engineer on the planet, and arguably in history, is of course the most notorious of Trump's ability to attract A-list talent to his team, which is another marked contrast to the first term. The other marked contrast is that these people are loyal. This includes Marco Rubio at State, who has been a foreign policy leader in the Senate for many years. Russ Vought back at OMB, who was thought to be the most competent holder of that job in Trump One. Readers of this newsletter will disagree about whether RFK, Jr. counts as an "all-star" but he is certainly someone who is deeply dedicated and learned in his cause, even though this dedication and learning has taken him to unconventional roads. At the Pentagon, under Pete Hegseth, another unconventional pick, the picks have all been stellar in terms of the quality of their resumes.

It's Trump's Party now. The Party discipline has been something to watch, no doubt helped along by JD Vance's skillful management of the conference. The very muted response to Trump's comments today about Zelensky is a very good example. (PolicySphere only does domestic policy, so we will not comment on the substance.) Under Trump One, this sort of outburst would have prompted a congressional rebellion. Here, even the most pro-Ukraine members of Congress are coughing and hemming and hawing. All of Trump's most controversial picks have been confirmed or are on track to be confirmed, such as Kash Patel later today.

Unitary Executive: two steps forward one step back. The key question for this term will be administrative state reform: what does it look like, and how far does it go. Certainly, verbally, President Trump has asserted total powers over the executive branch. And yet the underlying policy has been, if that makes sense, simultaneously audacious yet timid. For example: recategorizing a bunch of SES workers as Schedule F to be able to fire them signals real intent to clean out; at the same time, the President could simply have declared civil service rules unconstitutional and told civil service members he didn't like to clear out their desks, and dared the Supreme Court to stop him. Speaking of daring the courts, the President has certainly (along with the Vice President) asserted the ability to ignore lower court judgements that interfere too closely with the management of the executive branch; in practice, though, the Administration is not in fact ignoring the court orders, but rather trying to find ways to work around them, which is an implicit admission that it regards them as binding. Same thing with the recent EO asking independent agencies to submit new rules to OIRA for review; it sounds like an assertion of a fully unitary executive, but it is in fact more modest; the President hasn't tried to fire the Governors of the Fed, or the commissionners of the FEC, and hasn't looked like he might. This is not a criticism. In fact it can be interpreted as showing a laudable intent: it looks like the White House is groping for a way to do whatever is necessary to rein in an administrative state that every sane person agrees has become too big and too unaccountable, without completely overturning longstanding norms and precedent.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Process — Yesterday, your correspondent summarized the hoopla surrounding the controversy on how to do reconciliation and pass President Trump's agenda into law as "One Bill? Two Bills? How About Both?" Turns out the Administration's response, apparently, is "Yes." Punchbowl is reporting that Vice President Vance, acting as President Trump's messenger, told Senate Republicans that, while the President favors the House's "one bill" approach (as he has said publicly) he is still happy for the Senate to pursue its "two bills" approach "as a Plan B." so it really looks like we're getting both approaches. …Okay then!

#Medicaid — President Trump has publicly said on Hannity that he doesn't want to cut Medicaid. Once again he is showing his very keen political sense and frustrating his Congressional allies, who were/are eyeing Medicaid as a target for cuts to pay for all the other things they want to pay for. What too many Republicans are missing is that, post-ACA expansion, Medicaid is no longer just an aid program for the very poor; Republicans are now the party of the working man and many of them benefit from Medicaid; making them ineligible for Medicaid would push them onto the Obamacare exchanges, which would mean a de facto tax increase. Not a good idea! The Republicans are still only a 51% coalition with a bad map for the House next year. At the same time, Medicaid is a very poorly-conceived program badly in need of reform. And we do need the money.

#Reg — From Punchbowl: "House Republican leadership plans to target 10 Biden-era regulations using the Congressional Review Act in the coming weeks, looking to unravel rulemaking on a broad swath of topics that impact a wide range of industries." The CRA is a powerful tool for getting rid of regulations.

#FamilyPolicy — EPPC's Patrick T. Brown responds to a commonly-touted, conservative-sounding argument for subsidizing IVF, namely that it causes more births. But, he points out, "public subsidy of IVF hasn't prevented birth rates from declining in most developed nations." He adds, very commonsensically: it "could lead to lower birth rates if it gives women a false sense of confidence about delaying fertility until later ages." This second point, though hard to prove with the tools of quantitative social science, seems very important to your correspondent. With all that being said, it should still be noted that IVF is extremely popular in the US and that this is probably a losing cause for pro-lifers. And, of course, countless parents (including in religiously conservative communities) have been able to conceive thanks to IVF and are very happy that they did so.

#TheEconomyStupid — Credit card delinquencies in the US are at a 13-year high, along with the average credit card interest rate. Delinquencies seem to be entirely concentrated among subprime borrowers. Sign of weakness in the American consumer economy. More at The Economist.

#Axe — More EOs have come along to get rid of federal bodies and programs, including the Presidential Management Fellows Program, the US Institute of Peace and the Inter-American Foundation. As we write this, we note that American English seems to have no equivalent of British English's "Quangos" and French's "Comité Théodule" to designate these para-government bodies that seem to chiefly exist for the purpose of sitting around, holding meetings, producing reports, and generally not accomplishing anything that can be clearly explained to anyone.

#TrustYourLyingEyes — A new and massive meta-analysis confirms one of the most robust and well-replicated findings in social psychology, namely that most stereotypes, statistically speaking, are true; in this case, gender stereotypes. Here's the study.

#VibeShift — The DCCC raised $9.5 million in January, a record for the first month of an off year, Punchbowl Reports. Looks like the vibe shift isn't as profound as we sometimes thought it was, at least among rich Americans. The "antiwoke billionaires" are still a minority. Of course, the Democrats need to flip only two seats to regain the majority next year, so every bit will count.

#DOGE — The New York Post's headline sums it up: "DOGE claims $55B in total savings from cost-cutting spree as it launches data portal for public"