Regime Change and Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan insights

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump returned to the White House — and nothing about the second term looked like the first. Gone were the generals who pushed back, the lawyers who said no, the advisers who slowed him down. In their place: loyalists, billionaires, and true believers. What followed was the most aggressive expansion of executive power in modern American history, moving faster than the courts could stop it, faster than Congress chose to challenge it, and faster than the public could fully absorb. Inside the Second Donald Trump Presidency traces the first year of Trump's second presidency across eight fronts — the reshaping of the federal workforce, the militarization of immigration enforcement, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the largest tariff regime in eighty years, military strikes on Iran, unprecedented conflicts of interest at the highest level of government, and a press and Congress that largely watched from the sidelines. Drawing entirely from the public record — court filings, executive orders, congressional votes, and verified reporting — this book documents not just what happened, but what it means for the institutions designed to prevent any one person from holding unchecked power. This is not a book about politics. It is a book about power — how it was seized, how it was used, and what was left standing when year one was done.