Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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ICE should keep making traffic stops despite recent shootings, Trump says

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to keep pulling over vehicles, signaling his opposition Wednesday to plans announced just a day earlier to suspend most traffic stops following another string of fatal shootings.

https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-enforcement-deaths-traffic-stops-3d614361d8354474bc4eb8e37ec26b28?

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A Crisis of Civic Credibility (Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty)

View in browser You know that conspiracy theories have gotten out of hand when even Donald Trump thinks so. Yesterday in the Oval Office, reporters asked the president about FBI Director Kash Patel’s statement that his agents were assisting in an investigation into Senator Lindsey Graham’s death. Trump said the matter was simple: Graham had fallen victim to a heart problem. “What happened is actually something that’s very hard to detect,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of evil there. I know there’s all sorts of conspiracy theories going along. And I don’t think the FBI—I think the FBI’s wasting their time if they’re doing that.” Despite Trump’s effort to tamp down rumors, speculation about Graham’s death continues to spread, especially among Republicans. The MAGA influencer and self-proclaimed McCarthyite Laura Loomer suspects that Graham was murdered, but Marc Thiessen, a Washington Post columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter, has questions as well. Patel is a MAGA insider and veteran conspiracist, but John Cornyn—an establishment senator who lost Trump’s support and then a primary in May—also wants to see a toxicology report “to rule out any foul play.” At the same time, Mitch McConnell’s prolonged absence from the Senate is inspiring conspiracy theories as well. The senator’s office released a photograph Sunday night that was intended to quell rumors, and it even included a copy of that day’s Washington Post, like a proof-of-life picture of a hostage. The image was immediately dissected by would-be sleuths who wondered whether it was an AI-generated deepfake or some other kind of fabrication. (The Post acquired the original photo from McConnell’s office and says that metadata appear to show it was taken Sunday.) Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has seldom met a wild hare he won’t chase, went on the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice and said, “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” One can hardly be surprised that so many MAGA-aligned voices are leaping to unproven theories. (I have seen members of the public and media on the left also casting doubt on McConnell’s status, but no comparable remarks by Democratic lawmakers.) A conspiratorial bent has long suffused the right, but Trump made it core to his appeal. His 2016 campaign centered on the ideas that foreign countries were sending criminals to the United States and that Hillary Clinton was engaged in an elaborate uranium scheme with Russia. More recently, his rallying cry is the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The president can scarcely complain about the FBI wasting its time when Patel espoused conspiracy theories before his appointment, and when agents have been reinvestigating (yet again) the 2020 election results in Georgia. Fringe ideas find fertile territory in Congress, where roughly two-thirds of House members have joined the chamber since Trump won in 2016. This MAGA tendency has exacerbated a broader trend toward low trust in American society, which both preceded and contributed to Trump’s rise. “When people in a society lose faith or trust in their institutions and in each other, the nation collapses,” my colleague David Brooks warned in a 2020 essay. “In periods of distrust, you get surges of populism; populism is the ideology of those who feel betrayed. Contempt for ‘insiders’ rises, as does suspicion toward anybody who holds authority. People are drawn to leaders who use the language of menace and threat, who tell group-versus-group power narratives. You also get a lot more political extremism.” In such an environment, many people are slow to believe official explanations, whether they take the form of medical examiner’s reports or photographs issued by senatorial offices. Distrust has been further exacerbated recently by the rise of artificial intelligence. Disinformation and misinformation experts who spent years telling the public to be on guard against deepfakes are now trying to convince the public that the McConnell image is real. They weren’t wrong to be concerned before, but it’s easy to see how years of warning, combined with a social-trust deficit, contribute to the proliferation of doubt. I see this even in people around me whom I’ve never known to be suspicious or susceptible to baseless rumors. I see it in myself at times. The situation reminds me of a famous old bit called “Of Course—But Maybe” by the comedian Louis C.K. “I have, like, the thing I believe—the good thing, that’s the thing I believe—and then there’s this thing and I don’t believe it but it is there.” That has become the modern American condition. Skepticism of authority is prudent; excessive skepticism is corrosive. But it’s hard to tell when you’ve crossed that barrier, especially when everyone around you is wrestling with the same question. Trump’s attempts to soothe suspicions about Graham’s death are unlikely to make much difference. One reason is that the atmosphere of distrust has broken containment. Trump may have risen by exploiting that feeling, but now he’s just another authority figure to be doubted. Meanwhile, he continues to feed the problem elsewhere. The president is scheduled to give a speech tomorrow night in which he’s expected to speak about supposed threats to election integrity. Trump’s claims about noncitizen voting and other fraud have all been nonsense. For those who believe what he says, these comments encourage distrust in election officials and democracy broadly; for those who reject what he says, they create reasons not to trust the government he leads. Believe it or not, we are condemned to distrust. Related: America is having a moral convulsion. A Department of Justice for an age of conspiracy theories

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• 🪙 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled new images of a proposed $1 gold-colored coin featuring President Trump to commemorate America's 250th anniversary. Go deeper.

ps:Just absolutely pathetic!!!!!

• 🚔 President Trump said ICE should keep doing traffic stops, despite reports that his administration has mostly suspended them after two deadly shootings. Trump wrote on Truth Social: "I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job." Go deeper.

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📺 Trump vote-fraud speech traps networks

President Trump's primetime address from the East Room tonight (9 p.m. ET) is forcing TV networks to choose: Air potential 2020 election falsehoods, or risk backlash from a White House that's shown little hesitation in confronting the media, Axios' Alex Isenstadt writes.

• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tells Axios it'll be "a major address to the nation on protecting the integrity of our elections."
• The networks haven't announced their coverage plans, which is unusual for the morning of the event.

Why it matters: What would usually be a no-brainer decision to carry a presidential address has become a high-stakes editorial judgment for broadcast networks.

Trump has said his speech will focus on "free and fair elections." He has promised a "very big announcement" and "really big news" regarding the security of the U.S. voting system.

• He hasn't specifically said whether he'll bring up the 2020 election — an obsession of Trump's since he lost it and cried fraud.

The big picture: The networks face pressure from both sides.

• They've spent years trying to avoid amplifying Trump's false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Yet they also must contend with an FCC that, under chairman and Trump ally Brendan Carr, has opened investigations into broadcast networks.

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👀 Inside Trump's ICE reversal

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos via Getty Images

A livid President Trump complained to advisers late Tuesday about the Department of Homeland Security's decision to pause vehicle stops by ICE agents, after two fatal shootings of drivers in the past two weeks. The department's idea seemed to be that agents would get more training. But by yesterday morning, Trump had sent a Truth Social post reversing the pause, leaving DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and border czar Tom Homan to explain, Axios' Brittany Gibson and Alex Isenstadt write. Why it matters: The latest ICE shootings have revived a tense debate within the administration over how to balance increasing public pressure to stop the violence with Trump's demands for tough enforcement and more deportations. 🔭 Zoom out: The recent shootings show how Mullin's handling of such incidents contrasts with that of his predecessor as DHS secretary, the often-embattled Kristi Noem. The initial pause on vehicle stops came soon after a plea from Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R), in light of the shooting of a Colombian national in Maine on Monday. Keep reading.

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Hegseth announces new policy to test troops for low testosterone Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that he is rolling out a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among troops, calling it necessary to allow them to operate at their “absolute best.” Read more.

Why this matters: The move comes as other Trump administration officials have begun to advocate for men to have easier access to testosterone replacement therapies, but the messaging from Hegseth and others blends known science on the hormone with broader, and less substantiated, claims. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about what research or academic studies underpinned the move.   Over the past several years, special operations troops — and specifically Navy SEALs — have come under scrutiny for their use of testosterone and similar substances to enhance performance. The death of a SEAL recruit during training in 2022 led to the discovery of substances including testosterone in his possession, and revealed far more rampant drug use among the elite program than was previously acknowledged.   Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Air Force veteran, said it “proves that Secretary Hegseth takes direction from the far corners of the manosphere.”

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