☕️ NEGENTROPY ☙ Monday, April 28, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump’s first 100 days reviewed; WSJ misses the point; spicy days ahead; SNAP fraud arrests surge; new ag rules nudge self-deportation; tariffs boost U.S. factories; Columbus Day rescued; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! It’s a brand new week, and to start it off right, here’s your roundup: recognizing —as best I can— Trump’s first 100 days; WSJ asks the wrong question; what comes next will be spicy; more arrests made, in SNAP abuse cases; Ag agency gives illegals reason to self-deport; domestic US manufacturers are looking forward to tariffs; and President Trump saves Christopher Columbus and his special day from a band of wild indians.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

🔥🔥🔥

This morning, the Wall Street Journal ran one of the lamest major media stories marking the occasion, headlined “Trump Upended the Country in His First 100 Days: What’s Next?” “The next 100 days will consist of trade deals, peace deals and tax cuts,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised. “More American greatness is on the way.” But not so fast. Before pivoting to the unknowable future, let’s pause to take in what just happened.

Trump’s first 100 days defy description. Various weekend stories tossed around inadequate adjectives like historic, unprecedented, astonishing, unexpected, record-setting, and revolutionary. None effectively captured the moment. But many outlets, including the Journal, used none of those words. Instead, out of political pettiness and prissy pedantry, they tossed away the chance to write something historic, meaningful, and memorable, but instead opted to parrot progressives’ hypercritical, hair-splitting talking points.

To mark the occasion, let’s try to do better, shall we?

In our modern era, second presidential terms usually open with drift and damage control— cabinet shuffling, diplomatic pageantry, and let’s be honest, scandal management. Second terms are less enthusiasm and more prickly defensiveness. But President Trump’s second term shattered the mold and tossed the pieces into Judge Cano’s cell-phone dumpster.

After a first term mired in media-manufactured scandal, and ten thousand and three intermediate felony convictions, Trump should have made easy pickings. But he roared back into office at 90 m.p.h. —not weakened, but emboldened— and moving with a rushing political velocity unparalleled in living memory. In just 100 days, amidst a record-shattering flood of carefully drawn and coordinated executive orders, Trump has seized operational command of the federal government in a way no president ever has, embedding DOGE teams deep inside resistant agencies, sidelining bureaucratic inertia, pruning payrolls with a political chainsaw, and beginning the long-called-for but never-started Sisyphean task of restoring direct executive control over the administrative state.

In just 100 days, Trump has obsoleted the worn-out joke about modern presidents being just TV bobbleheads while the permanent career bureaucracy really ran things. In other words, get this, Trump’s already re-defined the presidency itself. In other words, he’s overturned the creeping acquiescence to Executive Branch control of the president instead of the other way around.

Trump’s presidency is a historic inflection point. All future presidents will be measured against the new standard set by this fledgling term.

This term’s opening act wasn’t merely an extension of Trump’s first-term battles. Instead, it baptised the start of a methodical, agency-by-agency, regulation-by-regulation restructuring, with Congress and the press scrambling to comprehend what just happened? Much remains in motion, and the most ambitious reforms still lie ahead. Former House speaker and political historian Newt Gingrich predicted, “I believe he has from now to about January 1st to be very disruptive.”

Meaning, eight more months of this.

Trump’s first 100 days already stands in stark contrast to the ordinary lame-duck slide into a two-year vacation from the last re-election campaign — a brand-new lesson proving that, while the political gravity of DC’s black hole might be real, with a little help from SpaceX presidents can achieve escape velocity.

🔥 Substantively speaking, Trump has already achieved early victories once thought politically impossible. Upending the usual dynamics, he’s rapidly confirmed a stellar cabinet of loyalists who can fight for themselves and who form a protective phalanx around him. The Department of Education has begun a rapid disassembly— literally fulfilling conservatives’ wildest dreams. USAID — a rogue, “untouchable” agency that for decades pursued a covert and alien foreign policy — has been unplugged and shut down for good.

Dozens of entrenched advisory boards and patronage offices have been dissolved. Through DOGE, Trump has launched the first serious federal clawback effort in modern memory, targeting wasteful grants, sweetheart contracts, Social Security fraud, and regulatory overreach. These are not merely symbolic gestures: billions are being clawed back into the Treasury.

The Executive branch is getting a long-overdue slap in the face, forcibly reminded that it serves the president, not vice versa. Even the permanent government’s ancient allies in media, who ten minutes ago predicted soaring gas prices (down) and $20 egg cartons (down), have been left sputtering and dumbstruck by falling energy costs and grocery prices that stubbornly refuse to rise.

Biden falsely promised to “build back better;” Trump is proving that building anything real starts with demolition. You must first prepare the job site and scrape off the existing decrepit structure. Only then can you pour a new foundation designed to last.

🔥 The awe-inspiring audacity of Trump’s second term lies deeper than mere policy reversals. Trump is doing something no modern American president has dared even to try: to reverse the natural entropy of government itself. Bureaucracies are built to slowly metastasize, accumulating power and funding until they choke off the system they were meant to serve.

See, e.g., the Roman Empire.

Trump isn’t just slowing that decaying process — he’s trying to break it in two. Eliminating entire agencies, unspooling decades of bureaucratic self-dealing, and restoring direct executive oversight isn’t just reform; it’s a counter-revolution. Where past presidents trimmed around the edges, Trump is pulling bureaucracy out by the roots. In a political culture where simply proposing a budget cut is considered radical, Trump’s wholesale dismantling of the administrative state stands as a truly audacious act — one that will either succeed brilliantly or provoke the mother of all institutional backlashes.

Entropy is considered scientifically inescapable. Trump’s mission then is nothing less than trying to defeat the iron laws of physics themselves. Physicists have coined a clunky word to describe the hypothetical ‘opposite’ of entropy: negentropy. Negative entropy.

Trump knows exactly what he’s risking: everything. His funny “Fork in the Road” memos offering federal workers generous severances were more than tongue-in-cheek HR strategy; they were also a much bigger metaphor. It’s not just a “fork in the road” for bureaucrats. With ruthless clarity, Trump’s first 100 days have described a “fork in the road” for America. For all of us.

The choice could not be clearer: either America reasserts control over its own government, or it will soon become a managed province in someone else’s empire. The first 100 days delivered no victory lap. They were a signal flare. Trump is not just governing; he is challenging the foundational assumptions underpinning American decline for half a century or more. Whether the coming fight leads to triumph or to another bloody crossroads remains to be seen.

But either way, the second Trump administration is no ordinary presidency. It is an all-in bet — and perhaps our last, best hope — that a free people can still govern themselves.

The WSJ asked, what comes next? But who cares what the Journal thinks. I predict that, if anything, the pace will only pick up speed. As Trump’s new cabinet officers and agency heads get their sea legs, the deep state will begin to suffer a horrible death by a thousand cuts.

🔥🔥🔥

Here’s Exhibit A: More arrests. Two days ago, the New York Post ran an encouraging story that escaped corporate media’s notice, headlined “Trump admin demands crackdown on illegal immigrants’ use of taxpayer-funded food stamps.”

Following Trump’s February executive order, the Department of Agriculture last week required states to crack down on illegal immigrants improperly using food stamps (SNAP). Although illegal immigrants are already banned from SNAP benefits, the Administration is forcing states to verify applicants more aggressively — using DHS’s SAVE system, Social Security death file cross-checks, and other federal tools — to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Don’t miss the historic nature of this; before Trump, Social Security refused to freely share its death master file, citing privacy for dead people.

I know you are probably wondering, how could there possibly be waste, fraud, or abuse in the food stamp program? As difficult as this is to believe, apparently there’s quite a bit of fraud going on in some places. (Cough, blue states.) Indeed, new Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also announced that arrests for SNAP fraud have already started. “We’ve already made arrests in Minnesota, New York, and Colorado, and we’re just getting started,” Brooke said. “We’re going to be extremely, extremely aggressive,” the Secretary promised.

The Post didn’t mention this, but it seems obvious this SNAP crackdown is part of Trump’s comprehensive immigration agenda, intended to provide another reason for illegals to self-deport. Compared to Mexico and South America, as we all know, life in the United States is expensive. Without thousands of monthly dollars of free grocery and restaurant budget, living off the grid might become unworkable.

All the pieces are designed to work together. And he assembled the machine under withering incoming fire during the first 100 days, while he was doing everything else, too. Give yourself multiple ways to win.

🔥🔥🔥

Bloomberg ran an exciting story this weekend headlined, “Trump Floats New Income Tax Cut in Bid to Ease Tariffs Bite.” Talk about underselling the headline. The proposal apparently aims to eliminate all income taxes on people making less than $200,000 a year. Here’s what the President tweeted yesterday:

Trump said it will take time, it won’t happen overnight, and you would think media would be okay with that, since we’re still waiting for President Brainpan J. Autopen’s so-called ‘inflation act’ to kick in. (Hint: don’t hold your breath.) “We’re going to make a lot of money, and we’re going to cut taxes for the people of this country,” Trump said yesterday while heading back to Washington from his New Jersey golf club. “It’ll take a little while before we do that,” he added.

Maybe it will happen … right before next year’s midterms? That would be propitious timing.

📈 In related news, Yahoo!Finance ran a story this weekend with this encouraging headline:

American Giant founder and CEO Bayard Winthrop joined Yahoo’s Julie Hyman on Asking for a Trend, and the two discussed how tariffs have boosted the company’s sales, which sources and manufactures almost all of its products here in the US.

Bayard is optimistic. He said his clothing company isn’t worried about tariffs at all.

In the interview, Bayard told Julie that, “for us, when you make domestically, it is labor on which you're primarily paying a differential. The sources of fabric and things like that are are quite equal to our international competitors.” He continued, “But we think paying more for labor is a good thing. We think that good quality jobs in communities that need them, particularly low-skilled work, is a critical piece that's been missing in the American economy.”

It’s anecdotal, sure, but in other words: the plan is working, just like Trump’s team said it would.

🔥 Yesterday, CNN’s political correspondent John King whined about the ActBlue investigation, calling it “ironic” that Trump campaigned on ending weaponization of government but is now busily investigating “small dollar donations” on ActBlue, as if ActBlue fraud is no big deal since the individual donations are small. (Which was the whole mechanism of the fraud, but never mind.)

CLIP: Democrats mad at ‘weaponization of government’ (0:36).

It is ironic, John, on that we can agree. If you watch the clip, enjoy how, right at the end, Dana Bash awkwardly gushes thanks at Mr. King for mansplaining it to her.

What comes next? Expect Democrats to get increasingly frantic and shrill as their fake voter base of illegals and their fake donation platforms continue to shrink.

🔥🔥🔥

Yesterday, CBS ran another story along similar lines headlined, “Trump says he's "bringing back Columbus Day from the ashes.”” Democrats sneered; from now on, Columbus day will be … Columbus day! It never went anywhere, they cried mockingly. Media, of course, made itself willfully blind.

In 2021, Biden’s Autopen declared Columbus Day would henceforth also be something called “Indigenous People’s Day,” by which they really meant “Indian Day,” except that the shorter, more descriptive word “Indian” triggers affluent, white, female liberals so they went with the confusing, multisyllabic alternative.

As now, back then Democrats swanked around asking what? and acting like they couldn’t understand why anyone would possibly object to Columbus’ ghost sharing his special day with the Indians, sorry!, I mean the Indigenous Personages of Unknown Gender Who Used to Occupy These National Lands Before Genocidal Maniacs Like Chris Columbus Butted In, And Who Were Much More Advanced Than It Looks But Just Got Back to Nature. (Okay, maybe with the occasional scalping and a little tribal sex trafficking here and there, but look what Columbus did!)

Progressives were unconcerned when rioters violently tore down Columbus statues in their enthusiasm for Biden’s woke new holiday, which after all was just sharing the day, and sharing is good, as we all know, as long as they’re sharing our stuff.

Anyway, this weekend Trump stopped playing Democrats’ passive-aggressive kindergarten games (what’s the big deal?) and said that’s it, it’s going back to being just Columbus Day, no sharing. Democrats secretly yearned to call the President an Indian Giver, but, well you know. They aren’t allowed to use that term anymore. It’s on The List.

Have a magnificent Monday! Paddle back here tomorrow morning for more breaking essential news with a side dish of ironic commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com