WP: Trump pushes for changes that keep opposition off balance, are hard to reverse

The Washington Post reports:

The administration’s approach: Overwhelm with action, outrun the usual checks on executive power, and change government and the country so quickly that some impacts could be irreversible even if courts later intervene.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller fully expected that invoking wartime powers would invite legal challenges, according to officials familiar with the plans. So he arranged for President Donald Trump to sign the proclamation late on a Friday night, hoping to jump-start deportations before a court could respond.

Miller’s maneuver reflected a motto he often shares with other officials: “The most important commodity in the executive branch is time.”

It also reflects the Trump administration’s broader approach in its early days: Overwhelm with action, outrun the usual checks on executive power, and change government and the country so quickly that some impacts could be irreversible even if courts later intervene. Opponents are so dizzied that they don’t know what to fight, and targets of aggression such as universities, corporations and law firms have been cowed into voluntary submission.

“When you’re winning, it’s like blitzkrieg,” Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s first-term chief strategist, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “They’re surrendering without a fight. This is extraordinary, and that’s their urgency: You got to keep pounding. Don’t let them up. Don’t let them have a breath. Don’t let them regroup. Don’t let them organize.”

…The new spin on Bannon’s original “flood the zone” formula arose from the lessons of Trump’s first term and four years out of power to hunker down and plan. Among the top lessons Miller and other alumni of the first administration learned: Force confrontations sooner and hash out the details in court rather than spend as much time vetting policies before introducing them…

An additional impact of the blitz of action is the response across institutions to avoid Trump’s retribution — by capitulating in advance.

Major companies such as Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon and Google said they would pull back on diversity programs after Trump campaigned against them. Columbia University punished students involved in demonstrations protesting Israel’s war in Gaza and agreed to overhaul an academic department under threat of losing $400 million in federal funding. The law firm Paul Weiss agreed to support the administration’s programs to reverse a punitive executive order, while other major law firms are shying away from suing the Trump administration or representing former Biden administration officials.