Perhaps more than any day yet, Day 18 foretold the future we should expect when it comes to the operation of the federal government:

Elon Musk, not elected to anything, used X to initiate repeated attacks on the end-of-year budget deal in Congress that would curtail a government shutdown. He threatened to oppose any supportive House Republican in their next primary, prompting GOP House members to publicly signal their opposition. Hours later, Trump and Vance followed, also announcing their opposition. The deal is now dead, two days before a looming shutdown.

In part due to the uncertainty and dysfunction, the Dow Jones fell almost 1,000 points—timed almost exactly when the drama began to unfold on social media.

Truly a bizarre and dysfunctional sequence of events. But no doubt a harbinger of the future.

This quote from FDR in 1936 feels as apropos as ever: “It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself.”