This is the week it all started to fall apart for Trump. He ended what was a disastrous week for his regime, having to capitulate with a public statement that he did not intend to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and softening his tone on China. His statements came after Wall Street dubbed a broad sell-off of U.S. stocks, U.S. government debt, and the U.S. dollar the Trump ‘Sell America’ trade. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 were also on track for their worst April since the Great Depression. Not exactly the stuff of making America great again.

This is also the week when the second Trump regime, which from appearances had been functional up until now and simply following the script of Project 2025, became more akin to a reboot of the dysfunction of the first regime. This week’s list is full of examples of the infighting chaos, incompetence, and failures that plagued the first regime. Trump’s incompetent loyalist Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth found himself in the middle of a storm. The regime played Keystone Cops with an “unauthorized” letter to Harvard University. Trump’s IRS saw a continuing revolving door of leadership in the midst of tax season. And Trump’s co-conspirator Elon Musk was basically run out of town as angry Americans (and Europeans and Asians) protested him and stopped buying his cars, resulting in Tesla’s bottom line plummeting by 71% — sending him packing from DOGE, which by all accounts was failing anyway, in an effort to resuscitate his reputation and brand.

This week Trump faced a series of setbacks. I cover them more extensively in my Substack note, Trump’s Really Bad Week, but this was truly a disastrous week for him, including in the courts, the economy, and a growing resistance to his actions and measures. At the same time, he has set up a showdown with the courts, including the Supreme Court, over his regime’s defying of court orders.

Pushback this week intensified and spread, and I want to recognize the effectiveness of protests at Musk’s Tesla showrooms, and the velocity of the real world impact. That should comfort many, that in this vein, our democracy still works! Other pushback came from Harvard University, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, law firms, federal courts and the Supreme Court, citizens showing up at town halls, and more nationwide protests. The rebellion or resistance or whatever this go-round will be dubbed is gathering strength amid the brewing storm.

1. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told a crowd of nonprofit leaders, “We are all afraid…we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

2. Bill Owens, the executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” resigned, citing a series of encroachments by parent company Paramount on journalistic independence. Owens was only the third person to run the show in its 57 years. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion.