What is the single thing that has surprised you most about the second Trump administration?

“If you’re surprised by Donald Trump, then you haven’t been paying attention” is a common rebuke. Well, as the person who played Trump in Kamala Harris’ debate preparations (and Hillary Clinton’s in 2016), I not only watched and read his every public utterance, but I also know how he said it, how often he said it, and, equally important, what he didn’t mention: law firms.

Save one firm closely associated with the infamous Steele dossier, he never brought them up. He did not give any indication a war on the legal establishment was coming.

And while he most certainly often expressed his distaste for both the mainstream media and higher education, he did not use another word for his three-headed target: fine.

Trump knows how to work the refs. Possibly his best skill. He threatens to sue. Revoke licenses. Boycott.

But as someone who paid inhumanly close attention, I found the fines levied against — and agreed to by — so many entities a surprise. While Trump’s motive was known, the means was not. So far, these shakedowns have yielded in excess of $1 billion.

Frankly, when his wrath turned to law firms, my initial thought was that this was an item added to his to-destroy list only after the election.

And while there have been other surprises concerning what he hasn’t done, I’ll keep those to myself.

Philippe Reines served as deputy assistant secretary of state under Hillary Clinton and is now a corporate and political-crisis consultant.

The greatest surprise may be how closely Trump’s foreign policy is aligning with the grand strategy that has guided U.S. policy for the past two centuries. Starting from the most important, and in declining order of importance: First, Trump’s focus on border security reflects a renewed emphasis on homeland defense — the primary strategic goal for any nation. Second, his stance toward Beijing-allied Venezuela illustrates a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine, which calls for the denial of footholds in Latin America for powerful foreign rivals. Third, Trump’s approach to Ukraine continues America’s traditional aim of preventing hostile powers from seizing the major industrial heartlands in Asia and Europe. Fourth, his support for Israel and engagement in the Middle East reaffirm the longstanding objective of preventing adversaries from controlling the world’s vital oil supplies.

Trump’s attention to these basic principles of U.S. foreign policy seems designed to allow the nation to gird itself for the primary challenge to American national security in this century: the rise of China. Trump’s emphasis on China as America’s rival signals a broader return to competition among major powers. He is pursuing a foreign policy that rebalances American ends and means in the traditions of American grand strategy — a surprise!

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley and a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice.

As world-building is one of a novelist’s most cherished skills, it is painful to acknowledge Trump to be a master of this art. However, he undeniably is.

In the Harry Potter books, we are given a sorting hat, an invisibility cloak, a quidditch ball, and countless other details, on top of which come institutions and traditions and geophysical idiosyncrasies — so many that their overwhelming counterfactual density make us suspend our disbelief, swallowing whole hog this “reality” along with its improbable narrative.

And so, too, Trump has fashioned a “reality” of astonishing breadth and detail. Not content with trampling on the separation of powers, he has destroyed a wing of the White House, paved over the Rose Garden, pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters, deployed the Marines to Los Angeles, defunded blue-state infrastructure, chosen official portraits for their frames, renamed the Gulf of Mexico, sued his own Department of Justice, persecuted universities, shut down the government, and more — all in 10 months. The result: We have, to a surprising degree, accepted his “normal.”

Are we really so easily overwhelmed? With surprising ease, he has cast spells on us that also recall Harry Potter — for example, “Stupefy!” (rendering us unconscious), “Petrificus Totalus!”(paralyzing us) and “Crucio!” (inflicting unbearable pain upon us). But now finally comes our own Defense Against the Dark Arts. All hail Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Gavin Newsom, who led the charge with “Riddikulus!” — the charm that disarms enemies by poking fun at them. And then this week — thank you, voters — we managed a most satisfying “Thumpus Trumpus!” Now more disenchantment, please. It will take our every wand to do it, but it is time to return from “normal” to normal. Let us summon our best dispelling spell — “Resurrectus Democratus!”

Gish Jen is the author of “Bad Bad Girl,” “The Resisters” and many other novels.

Except for Super Bowl XVIII in 1984, when the (then) Los Angeles Raiders crushed the (then) Washington Redskins, I’ve never made a worse prediction than about the start of the second Trump administration. I expected that the main event would be the mere resurrection of Schedule F, the Trump I plan to make it easy to fire policymaking federal career officials. Instead, OMB director Russell Vought has embarked on a far more ambitious and intricate — and surprisingly public — strategy to completely remake the federal government. He has made himself the strategic center of domestic policy — firing feds during the shutdown and shaping an executive order to transform the merit system into one where the administration’s top political officials could screen new employees for loyalty to the president’s policies. Rather than going through the nuisance of getting Congress to agree on ending a program or abolishing an agency, Vought simply has gutted the capacity of many agencies to do anything by ridding the government of their employees. It’s a far more effective approach than Elon Musk’s clumsy hacks at federal agencies and their workers — although Musk made it easier by first leveling much of the federal forest with his chainsaw.

That leaves a big question: Will Vought flame out as Musk did? My prediction (and I think I’m right this time): Vought has the experience and instincts to know just how to play the Washington game — and he’s going to do it in overdrive.

Donald Kettl is a professor emeritus and former dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

It almost seems quaint to note that among the societal gaps most concerning me as I took the helm of the public radio show “The Takeaway” in 2017 were the wealth gap, the truth gap and the empathy gap. I predicted that if any of these gaps widened they would tear at the already delicate fabric holding our society together.

Today that fabric is in tatters, and underpinning it all is a lack of empathy that is astounding, immoral and deadly. What makes the social and economic brutality of this moment so stunning is how the current administration enables it and laughs, literally, at those who dissent.

From our streets to our schools to our workplaces, the United States has become a nation of bullies.

Every day we bear witness to our neighbors being physically and verbally assaulted and detained by masked agents in fatigues. Millions of Americans are at risk of going hungry as food programs for the needy are shut down. Millions more are struggling to afford health insurance. Even if these events are short-lived, the damage to our ability to care for each other will be catastrophic.

Tanzina Vega is a journalist, media strategist and educator. She is a former host of “The Takeaway” on New York Public Radio and has also worked at The New York Times, CNN and The Boston Globe.

The biggest surprise about the second Trump administration is the set of policies designed to punish political opponents. The policies can be organized under a single heading: vengeance.

On Feb. 25, the president signed a memorandum directed at the law firm Covington & Burling. On March 6, the president issued an executive order with an unusual title: “Addressing risks from Perkins Coie LLP.” On March 14: “Addressing risks from Paul Weiss.” On March 25: “Addressing risks from Jenner & Block.” On March 27: “Addressing risks from WilmerHale,” complaining that the firm “rewarded Robert Mueller and his colleagues … by welcoming them to the firm after they wielded the power of the Federal Government to lead one of the most partisan investigations in American history.”

These actions belong in the same category as the presidential memorandum directed, by name, against Christopher Krebs; the indictment of James Comey; the threatened indictments of multiple others; and the restrictions on The Associated Press. The multiple actions directed against universities can be put in the same category.

Here is what President Trump said in 2016: “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.” Vengeance is scary, and so is the prospect of vengeance.

Cass Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, a former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the author of “On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom.”

The biggest surprise is the full embrace of Project 2025 by the administration and the speed with which it moved to make change. The project’s ethos (“personnel is policy”) is the operating system of Trump II, and the project’s blueprints have become the administration’s plans.

When I joined The Heritage Foundation in Spring 2022 to conceive and stand up the project, I recalled the words of city planner Daniel Burnham, a hero of mine: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized; make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a logical noble diagram once recorded will never die.”

I pitched Project 2025 to members of our coalition as done in Hollywood: the Manhattan Project meets Empire State Building meets D-Day; setting the best conservative minds to work on an existential problem (the administrative state); building a redefining edifice in a year’s time, with meticulous planning for wave after wave of action beginning on Jan. 20. Project 2025 certainly stirred the liberals, while focusing our side on making change quickly.

The president’s world-beating first 100 days empowered him to be a world peacemaker. As for where this goes, I believe the best is yet to come.

Paul Dans is former director of Project 2025 and a candidate for U.S. Senate in South Carolina.

What surprises me most about the second Trump administration is the success of its efforts to undermine diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Many Fortune 500 companies, universities and law firms have publicly and abruptly retreated from their ostensibly bedrock values in this domain. That’s an overcorrection for at least three reasons.

First, while some have declared that DEI is “illegal,” that is far too sweeping a statement. Many forms of DEI are perfectly legal. Indeed, according to a recent study that my center at NYU co-authored with Catalyst — a non-profit that promotes women’s inclusion — 65% of legal leaders believe there are greater legal risks to retreating from DEI than from staying with it.

Second, DEI is still remarkably popular. Public opinion polls conducted in 2024 and 2025 showed about 60% of the country supports DEI.

Finally, younger generations support DEI much more than older generations do. As those younger generations begin to seize the reins of power, the pendulum will swing back.

The elections this past Tuesday will doubtless embolden individuals to combat the many overreaches of this administration. My hope is that I soon will be equally surprised to see how quickly DEI — whether called that or not — bounces back stronger than ever before.

Kenji Yoshino is a law professor at NYU and co-author of the forthcoming “How Equality Wins: A New Vision for an Inclusive America.”

You’ve got to give it to them. These people are geniuses. I am in constant awe at the brilliance of their demented inventiveness. They manage to shock and surprise daily with their creative atrocities. And they keep them coming. There is no letup.

It’s hard to remember all of them because we have become so numb to the depravity. Some of their actions are so evil that we try to repress them. Others, so ludicrous that we can’t stop laughing in horror.

But let’s try. One of the most recent examples is the video Trump put out of himself flying a jet with a crown on his head and dropping feces on protesters. We should be over our disbelief at anything this administration does, but this one really blew me away.

Then there is the closing of the United States Agency for International Development, leaving thousands to starve or go without medical care. There is the pardoning of those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. There is his Cabinet, particularly the choice of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense (sorry, secretary of war). There was the summoning of all the top generals in the world to berate them about being fat. There is his waffling on Ukraine. There is the carnage in Gaza, where thousands were murdered and refused humanitarian aid by the Israelis with Trump’s approval. There is the naming of his daughter’s father-in-law (who served 14 months in prison before he was pardoned by guess-who) as ambassador to France, and the appointment of his son’s ex as ambassador to Greece. There are the masked ICE agents roaming the country. And let’s not forget the demolition of the East Wing.

If their goal is to cause Democrats and true patriots to lose their minds, they’re doing a great job. And truly, I am surprised by the appalling creativity they have employed. Congratulations to all!

Sally Quinn is the author of “Silent Retreat” and a contributor to The Washington Post.

The most surprising aspect of Trump’s second term has been the fragility and vulnerability of longstanding American democratic institutions.

Trump’s divisive rhetoric and authoritarian rule congeal around an utter disregard and disrespect for the multiracial democratic order that arose from the global ashes of the Second World War. Although framed by the logic of Cold War liberalism, this new order helped birth a national consensus on civil rights and racial justice at home and human rights abroad.

Trump’s undermining of this order has been swift and relatively definitive. From the assaults on academic freedom and inquiry in higher education to book bans to anti-woke measures that use the term “woke” as a euphemism for black, the Trump administration has successfully dismantled decades-long efforts at creating a more inclusive history of the United States and the world.

Attacks on law firms, which capitulated by promising millions in free legal fees, and independent media critical of Trump have chilled the Fourth Estate’s ability to serve as an honest broker in the face of tyranny.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have exposed an astonishing number of American citizens and undocumented people — who should retain their dignity, even if they lack papers — to the frightening face of domestic fear, anxiety and terror.

The tariffs will hurt American workers and lower the living standards and expectations of millions.

Amidst all of this, the president muses about running for a third term that he is constitutionally barred from, and the media indulges and normalizes this rhetoric. We are witnessing nothing less than the end of American exceptionalism.

Peniel Joseph is founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the author of “Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution.”