Trump Administration Wields Power at Home and Abroad with Sanctions, Troops, and Gaza Deal
From Chicago to Tehran to Gaza, President Trump’s rapid-fire decisions reveal a governing style built on speed, spectacle, and raw assertion of power.
Washington, October 9 EST: By Thursday evening, Donald Trump’s second White House had flexed nearly every lever of power it controls from the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions machinery to the National Guard’s boots on American streets, to the Oval Office’s global megaphone. In a span of hours, the administration targeted Iran’s oil networks, dispatched troops into Chicago, and hailed a tentative ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as “a great day for the world.”
None of it was subtle. Each move underscored Trump’s governing instinct: action first, consensus later. It’s a governing rhythm that alarms critics but has proven politically potent especially for a president who thrives on visible confrontation.
A Sanctions Blitz Against Iran’s Shadow Fleet
According to AP News, the administration announced sanctions on 50 individuals, companies, and ships accused of helping Iran move oil in defiance of U.S. restrictions. The list reads like a tour of the world’s maritime middlemen: entities in Hong Kong, the UAE, and China flagged for disguising the origin of Iranian petroleum through shell companies and renamed vessels.
Freezing U.S. assets and cutting access to the dollar system are standard tools of economic warfare. But the volume and timing of these sanctions suggests something larger. Since returning to power, Trump has been rebuilding what he once called his “maximum pressure” campaign, using the same playbook that defined his first term’s Iran strategy: choke revenue, test allies’ loyalty, and dare Tehran to retaliate.
The Biden-era détente with Iran’s proxies in the Gulf has evaporated. In its place is a familiar escalation cycle one that risks driving up global oil prices while reminding voters that Trump’s foreign policy is built on clear villains and simpler lines of force. For hawks inside his administration, that’s not a bug; it’s the point.
Guard Troops In Chicago: Federal Power Meets Local Resistance
At home, the deployment of 500 National Guard troops into Chicago ignited an instant constitutional firestorm. According to The Washington Post, 200 Guard members came from Texas, 300 from Illinois, and they’ll remain for at least 60 days, tasked with protecting federal personnel and property, including ICE offices.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker called it “an invasion.” His administration, joined by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, filed lawsuits arguing the move violates both state sovereignty and the Posse Comitatus Act a Civil War-era safeguard against using the military for domestic law enforcement. The courts have moved swiftly; hearings are already underway to determine the legality of deploying one state’s Guard into another over that state’s objection.
The symbolism is impossible to miss. Trump’s Chicago gambit echoes the summer of 2020, when federal agents clashed with protesters in Portland and Seattle. Back then, he cast himself as the last barrier between “anarchist cities” and order. Today, the rhetoric is sharper and the authority broader. The Post reports that Trump suggested state officials who resist deployment should face “criminal consequences.”
That threat may never materialize, but its intent is unmistakable: to reassert a federal right to police blue states, even over their protest. It’s a high-stakes showdown not only over troop placement, but over who gets to define “law and order” in a polarized America.
A Gaza Pause, Or A Turning Point?
While domestic tempers flared, Trump claimed a global victory. In what he described as a “first phase” agreement, Israel and Hamas accepted a U.S.-brokered pause in fighting and a hostage-prisoner exchange, according to The Washington Post and Reuters. The deal would reportedly involve Israel pulling back forces to specified lines in Gaza while Hamas releases hostages, beginning as soon as this weekend.
“This is a great day for the world,” Trump told Reuters, adding that he expects all remaining hostages freed by Monday. In his telling, the agreement is proof that “peace through strength” still works a familiar slogan from his first presidency.
But as veterans of Middle East diplomacy know, ceasefires in Gaza rarely end the story. They buy time. They test leadership. And they tend to unravel when one side feels shortchanged or humiliated. According to The Post, Israel estimates roughly 20 hostages are still alive; Hamas wants dozens of its prisoners released in exchange. Whether both sides can stomach the optics of compromise is another matter.
Still, it’s a public relations victory for Trump at a crucial moment. His critics may question the deal’s durability, but its announcement alone projects statesmanship and momentum both invaluable commodities as his domestic agenda grows more combative.
A Day Of Power Plays
There’s a through line in all three moves: Trump is governing by assertion. Sanctions that extend America’s economic reach. Troops that test the boundary between state and federal power. Diplomacy that puts the president, personally, at the center of a global narrative.
Each of these actions rewrites, however slightly, the norms his predecessors tiptoed around. Barack Obama and Joe Biden both preferred to multilateralize conflict; Trump internalizes it, framing every dispute foreign or domestic as a test of will. The results are uneven but undeniably kinetic.
For now, his White House looks less like a deliberative cabinet and more like a campaign war room with executive authority. It’s the style that propelled him to power and, in the short term, keeps him there. But governing by dominance carries its own risks: markets spook, allies hedge, courts intervene.
And yet, Trump’s calculus remains constant speed and spectacle over slow consensus. Whether that strategy holds in the months ahead will depend on forces not even he can fully control: oil markets, federal judges, and the fragile arithmetic of peace in Gaza.
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A political science PhD who jumped the academic ship to cover real-time governance, Olivia is the East Coast's sharpest watchdog. She dissects power plays in Trenton and D.C. without bias or apology.
