New year's blitz reveals Trump's limitless view of power

The first week of 2026 left little ambiguity about what President Trump thinks of power — or whether there are any limits on his. Just listen to him and top aide Stephen Miller.Trump to The New York Times, when asked if there are any checks on his global ambitions: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."Miller to CNN's Jake Tapper: "[Y]ou can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power."Why it matters: That worldview manifested itself in one of the most frenetic, forceful starts to a year in recent memory. Through it all, the White House barreled forward with swagger, speed and open disdain for guardrails.Zoom in: Americans awoke last Saturday to the stunning news that the U.S. military had attacked Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a daring overnight raid.Condemnation at the U.N. Security Council fell on deaf ears: Trump raised the threat of further interventions against Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Iran and even Greenland, sparking a diplomatic crisis with NATO.Determined to enforce the "Donroe Doctrine" of American supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. seized five oil tankers accused of violating sanctions — including a Russian-flagged vessel.When the Senate voted to rein in Trump's military authority in Venezuela, the White House rejected the premise outright: "The War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law," Vice President Vance said."I don't need international law," Trump told the Times. "I'm not looking to hurt people."On Friday, less than a week after Maduro's arrest, Trump hosted Big Oil executives at the White House and urged them to invest $100 billion in Venezuela, which he suggested the U.S. may "run" for years. It's still not quite clear what that means.Zoom out: Back home, Trump ushered in the new year with a domestic show of force, deploying 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis for what the Department of Homeland Security called the largest immigration operation ever.During that surge a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, Renée Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE officer — triggering mass protests nationwide.Trump officials accused Good of trying to run over the officer in an act of "domestic terrorism." Federal authorities have blocked Minnesota from investigating — and Vance is claiming the officer is "protected by absolute immunity."The big picture: Maduro and Minnesota largely swallowed this week's news cycle, obscuring a host of other norm-shattering moments that passed with little sustained scrutiny.On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, the White House published an official government web page falsely claiming the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol was "peaceful."Trump used Truth Social to call for a $600 billion increase in Pentagon spending, announce sweeping interventions in housing and financial markets, and order crackdowns on how defense contractors and institutional investors spend their money.His health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., upended decades of public health policy by rewriting the federal vaccine schedule to recommend fewer shots for children.The bottom line: Trump is a master of flooding the zone. Now in the second year of his second presidency, his strategy is more focused on domination than distraction.