Two weeks never used to feel so long. Now, it’s an American eternity.

Working backwards from the last quip, for the first time since the National Security Act of 1947, the country has returned to having a Department of War.  The post-World War II American government decided a restructuring of management and operations was necessary after a global conflict that the National World War II Museum says took anywhere from 60 to 80 million lives worldwide (including civilians). The statute created the Air Force and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, breaking off the Department of the Army and Department of the Navy into civilian-led offices under the direction of a Secretary of Defense. It also created the Central Intelligence Agency.

Could they have made all those changes in 1947 without changing the department’s name from War to Defense? Of course. Perhaps the change was just a marketing option for a populace deeply weary of war. It is easy to see the name change back to the Department of War as its own marketing ploy, as a political gimmick designed to give the Left yet another irritating controversy with which to feed its outrage and give the Right yet another reason to pump its collective fist. The president has said of the name change that it simply sounds “stronger;” “defense is too defensive,” he said. The name change doesn’t change anything. But there are other significant changes to note from recent days.

There’s the firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Susan Monarez, and the resignations of three other agency officials, in solidarity with her refusal to tow the party line. The newly confirmed agency head, only on the job for one month, released a statement saying she had chosen “protecting the public over serving a political agenda.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. told Fox News that agency leadership needs to execute President Trump’s agenda – an agenda that appears to be his own anti-vaccine creed, primarily. That agenda clearly runs contrary to public safety, or Dr. Monarez would have green-lit the recommendations from the handpicked CDC panel that Kennedy assembled after firing the actual experts.

The state of the CDC, including Kennedy firing 600 people from the agency before Monarez, is a problem. The world just finished a devastatingly fatal pandemic, with the richest country in the world leading every nation in cases and unnecessary deaths. Were there to be another outbreak of something deadly, (there are now thousands of measles cases, though it was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000), is there any reason to think it won’t be worse? Even Republican Senators know that RFK Jr. is a problem, as his grilling this week on Capitol Hill implied. And yet somehow, he is still there. The president is not moved to remove the unqualified cabinet member who has his position as payback for not splitting the anti-Kamala Harris vote, by dropping out of the presidential race.

Then there’s the removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for claiming a homestead exemption, a tax discount for a primary residence, that she’s allegedly not entitled to claim. Ironically, the parents of the federal official who initially accused her of wrongdoing are claiming the same exemption on multiple properties. And yet, Mr. Trump has gone as far as to sic the Justice Department on the one Black Fed governor, one who consistently votes with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to keep interest rates where they are, against the president’s wishes.

Lisa Cook is now being he said criminally investigated for mortgage fraud, so that Mr. Trump can singlehandedly control economic policy by creating openings on what should be an independent Fed board. He will then fill those openings with people who will do his bidding. It’s just a bonus that he gets to target a person of color in the process and throw another log on the fire of racial hostility.

Congress continues to allow this behavior. Congress continues to collect a paycheck for little to no reason. The country is therefore in financial trouble, too. The job numbers already suggest that, even without Donald Trump controlling the Fed.

Republican governors with high crime in their major cities are sending their national guard troops to Democratic cities with crime rates on the decline. This is happening while Republican-controlled state legislatures redraw congressional districts to engineer staying in power after the midterm election in 2026. Republicans are pulling out all the stops to press their will upon the country and government. Democrats can counter by redrawing their own districts, which California Governor Gavin Newsom said he would do weeks before Texas called its special session to steal five seats from Democrats. But that doesn’t address the enormous problem of politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around.

It feels increasingly like the country has passed a point of no return. If Democrats regain control of Congress in 2026, the country will still have in the White House a president that cares little about the powers of the other branches. Can we citizens even have faith that Democrats can prevent continued executive overreach? Can we even trust that the current Speaker of the House will acknowledge duly elected members? If the Democrat wins the White House in 2028, reversing the overreaching would require engaging in some of the same errant behavior, like purging whole departments of the government of people loyal to Donald Trump.

The administration has irrevocably shattered the good China. There is no glue that can accomplish putting the dishes back together. Trump 2.0 has accomplished forcing a brand-new trial for the Great Experiment. We can’t say the Experiment failed. It’s that the variables were intentionally corrupted. What will the new variables be when constitutional principles and powers are restored? And when will we know?