On Dec. 8, 2020, a month after losing the election, then-president Donald Trump announced his intent to name 26 people to advisory boards across the federal government. Among them were three would-be members of the National Cancer Advisory Board, and in the months following, these three appointments—which have been blocked and ultimately terminated by the...
The Trump administration did exactly what it said it would do to disorient anyone involved in making policy or touched by it. The president and his crew have “flooded the zone”—the term and the image are theirs, as is the strategy of dropping a flurry of executive orders and memoranda that shake the foundations of the American system of government, raising questions of legality and constitutionality, and, above all, making it a challenge for anyone to see the entire picture and think strategically.
