Donald Trump was barely into his second week back in the White House when he declared that his latest presidency already heralded the “golden age of America”. Others reached for more ominous characterisations of the barrage of orders from the new administration that have rocked the US government: blitzkrieg, shock and awe, criminal.
Trump came out of the starting gate fast with a “crowd-pleasing” crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the cancellation of federal diversity programmes and the wholesale dismissal of independent anti-corruption inspectors from a raft of federal agencies.
