This week’s covers | Jan 25th 2025 Edition

We haVE two covers this week. In one we consider Donald Trump’s imperial presidency. The consensus that America should be a benign superpower has gone. Mr Trump wants to see the country unleashed, freed from norms, from political correctness, from bureaucracy and, in some cases, even from the law. What’s left is something old and new, an ideology from the railroad era mixed with the ambition to plant the flag on Mars. The hope is that the president will keep his vows to make America’s government more efficient, its economy more vibrant and its borders secure. But a far worse outcome is also plausible.