Playbook: “Much has been made of Trump 2.0’s use of ‘flooding the zone’ to overwhelm its perceived opponents and implement its policy agenda. But the flip side of flooding the zone is that it can be difficult to drive a coherent message; you’re trying to occupy the same zone you’ve already overstuffed with news.”

“Inasmuch as the glut of news itself presents Trump as a man of action, that can be helpful to his agenda. But if those cuts are instead seen as simply chaotic and haphazard, or contribute to a sense that Trump is not actually in control and that Musk has been left to free-agent his way through the government, it carries real political risk for their entire project.”

“There’s an important distinction between controlled chaos and just, well, chaos.“

“President Donald Trump on Thursday again raised the prospect of serving for an unconstitutional third term, asking a crowd at a White House event whether he should run again and receiving audience chants of ‘Four more years!,'” the Washington Post reports.

“The suggestion followed a stretch of days in which Trump referred to himself as a king and quoted a dictator in suggesting that he was immune from following laws — all while his administration has continued pushing the bounds of presidential power.”

Susan Glasser: “Trump’s overt endorsement of a pro-Putin foreign policy has, understandably, shaken the world in the last few days. Just as jarring, in my view, has been Trump’s embrace of Putin-like tactics at home, a hallmark of his return to power which has unfolded with a speed and ferocity far different than what Trump was able to pull off in his first term.”

“President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of e-commerce transactions into turmoil,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.”

“The US Marshals Service has deputized members of Elon Musk’s private security detail, giving them certain rights and protections of federal law enforcement agents,” CNN reports.

“The first nationwide database tracking misconduct by federal police officers has been shut down by President Donald Trump, the Justice Department confirmed, deleting a resource experts said improved public safety by helping prevent bad cops from jumping to new agencies and starting over with clean records,” the Washington Post reports.

“The database was first proposed by Trump in 2020 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. But it wasn’t created until two years later when a Joe Biden executive order launched the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database. Trump issued an order last month revoking Biden’s orders, and the database.”