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deregulation
Trump's Great Talent: Breaking Many Things at Once
Let’s call what the Trump administration is doing “multitrashing”: destroying things on multiple fronts, like a bull in a shopping mall full of fragile wares.
Mar 27, 2026
Maybe you’re reading this article while listening to a podcast. Or you’re participating in a dull Zoom meeting. Or you’re talking on the phone with a relative.
Maybe you’ve just read the first three lines of this article three times without really registering them because your attention is absorbed elsewhere.
You’re not alone.
The modern age, with its multiple demands on a person’s time, seems to require multitasking. It’s not the kind of activity you read about in the classics. Surely that fellow who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC didn’t carry along a couple papyrus scrolls to read along the way. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint Mona Lisa’s smile, stop to conduct a scientific experiment on gravity, and simultaneously jot down his thoughts on anatomy, going back and forth among those activities like a whirling dervish.
Trump has been released in the FAO Schwarz of military toy stores, and he wants to use all the gadgets. This time around, the generals aren’t holding him in check.
Though it promises greater productivity, multitasking is not a wondrous invention. Shifting between tasks, according to a number of psychological studies, actually reduces productivity and generates more errors. The result can be banal, as in, “I’m sorry, could you repeat what you just said to me?” Or it can be fatal, as in the thousands of deaths caused by drivers looking at their phones.
It’s hard to imagine President Donald Trump multitasking, unless you count sleeping during cabinet meetings, lying and walking at the same time, or eating Whoppers while dispersing them on social media. And yet, his administration has been extremely effective its first year doing multiple things at the same time, if you define “effective” in terms of lives lost, reputations ruined, and institutions destroyed.
Don’t mistake all this destruction for multitasking. The effort to keep all the spinning plates aloft is something pursued, however spuriously, in the service of greater productivity. Instead, let’s call what the Trump administration is doing “multitrashing.” Imagine a bully that pushes the magician out of the way so that all the plates come crashing to the ground. Now multiply that a thousand-fold. Trump and his cohort are busy destroying things on multiple fronts, like a bull in a shopping mall full of fragile wares.
Just look at what the Trump team has done to the federal government: programs gutted, agencies disbanded, regulatory frameworks diluted to the point of disappearance. Just look at the destruction of science funding, the rollback of civil rights, the wrenching apart of immigrant families. Trump has approached domestic policy as if it were an axis of resistance—Bureaucrats, Academics, the Woke, and the Undocumented—that requires a multifront war of assault and attrition.
Let’s face it: The frog of America is not in a pot of water coming to a slow boil. The frog of America is in the middle of a pile of rapidly accumulating rubble. What the poor frog can’t perceive is how high and how wide this pile of rubble actually stretches. The frog thinks: Maybe it’s not a lot of damage and I can soon jump my way clear. Poor, deluded frog.
If multitrashing has been so egregiously successful at home, it pales in comparison with Trump’s actions in the international arena. The trash-talking and trash-acting president has discovered, in his second term, that the US military arsenal is not just for deterrent purposes. Trump has been released in the FAO Schwarz of military toy stores, and he wants to use all the gadgets. This time around, the generals aren’t holding him in check.
The itinerary of destruction so far this term has involved the US military in Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, along with two excursions to Iran. It’s been only a year, but what a long, strange, vindictive trip it’s been.
The Iran War
The Iranian government still stands. This is remarkable given the sheer amount of money and firepower the United States and Israel have devoted to toppling it. If Trump had focused on one task, rather than being engaged in multitrashing, he might have at least avoided some of the worst consequences of this war. Convinced of an easy victory, he did nothing to shockproof the US economy by, for instance, arranging for naval escorts in the Strait of Hormuz.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for all his similar hubris, nevertheless prepared the Russian economy for the expected sanctions after his full-scaled invasion of Ukraine. Trump, by contrast, is the Alfred E. Neuman of presidents: “What, me worry?”
Other presidents have been vengeful, violent, imperialist. But their destructive campaigns were usually in the serve of constructing something.
Iran, meanwhile, is focused on one thing: regime survival. It has caused destruction in turn, in multiple locations, but this has all served the purpose of increasing the pain for Israel and the United States. Closing down the Strait of Hormuz, bombing energy infrastructure throughout the Gulf, selecting hardliners to lead the new government: Iran wants not just to force a ceasefire but to win concessions such as a reduction in sanctions.
Trump, frustrated by a conflict that exceeds his attention span, has moved onto other tasks, like assisting drug operations in Ecuador, threatening NATO countries, and pursuing regime change in Cuba. There is method in his madness. All of this furious activity keeps Trump in the news cycle and in the hearts of his supporters. It keeps Congress out of the loop and adversaries (as well as putative friends) guessing.
Most importantly, it keeps potential successes rather than obvious ongoing failures in the public eye.
The Ultimate End
Other presidents have been vengeful, violent, imperialist. But their destructive campaigns were usually in the serve of constructing something. George W. Bush imagined a new democratic order in the Middle East. Richard Nixon dreamed of an anti-communist bloc in Southeast Asia. Most presidents from Teddy Roosevelt on have attempted to position the United States as the world’s policeman atop a rules-based order that disproportionately benefits America.
In a recent New Yorker piece, Daniel Immerwahr notes that Trump has “liberated himself from the burdens of empire.” Ironically, horribly, this disburdening has freed the president to destroy at will.
Indeed, it seems that Trump is multitrashing for the sheer malicious joy of it. He didn’t build something new in Venezuela, simply destroyed his rival. He is planning something comparable for Cuba. As for Iran, he is not even sure what constitutes victory, other than a display of epic fury.
Multitrashing is the opposite of bureaucracy. It destroys without a thought to order, efficiency, results, consequences. Only the strong can survive the harrowing process of such destruction.
As in his domestic campaigns, Trump is up against what he imagines to be a global axis of resistance: the United Nations, all Europeans to the left of Nigel Farage, any rival autocrat who refuses to bend a knee. The international order is the creation of his hated liberals, so it too must go. He has absolutely no idea of what to replace the rules-based system with other than, perhaps, a reality TV show in which countries must submit to humiliating tasks while a single judge, Trump, decides who rises and who falls.
It is the nature of bureaucracy to break a task down to its smallest components, like a Ford assembly line, in order to produce things more efficiently. It is, in theory, a process of focus. In practice, as anyone who has had to deal with the Department of Motor Vehicles knows, bureaucracy is diffuse and unfocused. But again, in its way, bureaucracy has been created to keep a modern society functioning. It is the skeleton of order that keeps everything in place.
Multitrashing is the opposite of bureaucracy. It destroys without a thought to order, efficiency, results, consequences. Only the strong can survive the harrowing process of such destruction. Billionaires thrive in Trump’s America; superpowers dominate in TrumpWorld. Meanwhile, in a rage room of his own devising, Trump continues to flit from one activity to another, using a sledgehammer to destroy computers, a chain saw to cut through furniture, a howitzer to blow up heavy machinery.
It is theater of a sort, and Trump delights in performing on the world stage. But it’s not kabuki. It’s a visceral one-man show that reveals the sickening highs and lows of this new theater of cruelty.
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Stop Tyrant Trump's Lawless Attack on the Regulations Keeping Us Safe
Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections.
Feb 21, 2026
“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.
President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.
It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.
Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.
Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.
Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”
Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”
In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.
In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.
RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.
The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?
Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).
Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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'Patently False': Trump Official Blasted Over Claim That CFTC Has Power to Oversee Prediction Markets
The Trump family stands to make big money from the total deregulation of “prediction markets.” A key official now claims they can only be overseen by a federal agency in bed with industry CEOs.
Feb 20, 2026
As President Donald Trump plans to profit from his own "prediction" betting app, his administration is claiming that sole regulatory oversight of the burgeoning gambling industry belongs to an agency advised by executives from the multibillion-dollar betting companies themselves. Critics say it's totally illegal.
On Tuesday, Mike Selig, the chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced that the agency had filed a brief attempting to fight "an onslaught of state-led litigation" against companies like Polymarket, Kalshi, Crypto.com, and other apps.
States have alleged that these apps—which allow users to earn money by making accurate predictions on sports and other events—should be regulated similarly to gambling apps, which are subject to licensing requirements, age restrictions, and tax obligations.
But the brief filed by Selig asserts that the CFTC, which has much looser regulations, has "exclusive jurisdiction" over the prediction apps, which he referred to as "derivatives markets"—a term for venues where people trade financial contracts backed by stocks, bonds, or commodities.
"American prediction markets aren’t new. They have been regulated by the CFTC for more than two decades and serve legitimate economic purposes," he said. "These markets have changed the way people consume news, monitor events, [and] engage in politics, and can be more accurate than competing products."
"Congress gave the CFTC comprehensive authority over any contract based on a commodity, and the legal definition of a commodity is very broad," he continued.
Being regulated by CFTC is an obvious boon to the betting companies, because it essentially means they'll be regulating themselves.
As The Lever noted, Selig's statement came just days after he'd "recruited top executives from those same companies—including leaders from Polymarket, Kalshi, Crypto.com, DraftKings, and FanDuel—to help advise regulators on how to 'develop clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American financial markets.'"
It's not merely a corporate giveaway, but also an apparent act of brazen self-dealing for the Trump family, whose media company just months ago partnered with Crypto.com to launch its own prediction platform called "Truth Predict."
It just so happens that Crypto.com's parent company also donated $30 million to Trump's super PAC in 2025. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and unpaid adviser to Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi.
Prediction betting apps, which allow users to make money predicting political events, have faced accusations of insider trading from those who may have foreknowledge of the Trump administration's activities.
In January, a user created a new account and bet $32,000 that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of the month. Within hours, Trump had launched an operation to kidnap the president, netting the user a $436,000 payday.
Just days later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt drew suspicion when she abruptly looked up at the clock and ended a press conference just seconds before a Kalshi bet marked it to conclude, which allowed those who bet it would not go over time to win 50 times what they'd wagered. The White House denied any insider trading, calling it "100% Fake News."
While prediction markets have become the toast of the Trump administration, the push for near-total deregulation has even some Republicans worried.
Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.), whose committee oversees the CFTC, said on Wednesday that he'd be speaking with Selig about his announcement.
“This is an area that just caught fire. I don’t think anybody expected it to grow at the rate that it has,” Boozman said. “But there is concern; it’s the Wild West. There’s not much regulation.”
Democrats, meanwhile, argued that Selig was asserting authority that didn't exist.
"This is patently false," wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in a response to Selig's announcement on social media. "Congress has not given the exclusive power to the CFTC to regulate prediction markets. He just made this up out of thin air because the gambling companies that back Trump wanted him to."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) added that "Trump’s CFTC chair is trying to strip states of their authority to regulate gambling within their borders and hamstring their ability to protect Americans from getting ripped off."
Some states are still pushing ahead as usual. In an act of defiance to the administration, the same day as Selig's announcement, gaming regulators in Nevada appeared to thumb their nose at the CFTC by filing a lawsuit seeking to block Kalshi from operating sports betting in the state.
“Its continued operation harms the state and the public every day and poses an existential threat to the state’s gaming industry,” Jessica Whalen, chief deputy solicitor general for the attorney general’s office, wrote in the filing. “Kalshi has continued to dramatically expand its business, rather than attempting to maintain any kind of status quo.”
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