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Trump says the U.S. is in a ‘period of transition’ — and more takeaways from this week

President Trump speaks to the press as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

President Trump speaks to the press as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

We’ll be recapping what you need to know every Friday morning for the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Get more updates and analysis in the NPR Politics newsletter.

From economic and geopolitical volatility to a government shutdown standoff, the continued slashing of the government and mixed messaging on the measles, it was another consequential and news-packed week of this second Trump presidency.

Here are five takeaways from what happened this week that help you sift through what matters in our ongoing effort to chronicle the first 100 days of President Trump’s second turn in office:

1. Trump’s “period of transition”:

President Trump triggered concerns this week of a recession when he declined to rule the possibility of one out.

“There is a period of transition,” he said on Fox News, “because what we’re doing is very big.”

What the Trump administration is doing is implementing, pulling back and doubling down on tariffs. His trade war with Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union sent stocks tumbling and has caused general economic and geopolitical tumult.

Trump later defended his remarks when asked about his hesitancy to say there would not be a recession. “Of course I hesitated,” he said. “Who knows?” But by Tuesday, he’d walked that back entirely, saying, “I don’t see it at all.”

Trump’s “period of transition” remarks recalled the Biden administration saying inflation was “transitory.” (Biden himself said he believed price increases would be “temporary.”) Inflation did decline significantly eventually, but that was cold comfort for a lot of Americans, and Biden’s party lost the presidency.

Now, there’s a new administration, full of billionaires and multi-millionaire former corporate CEOs, pleading for patience on prices in hopes of bringing back manufacturing in the long term and telling Americans things like, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream,” as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did. Trump won’t be on the ballot again, but this week had to make a lot of Republicans who will be very nervous.

2. “The ball is now in Russia’s court”:

The Trump administration said Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire in its war with Russia. As a result, the U.S. will restart aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. “The ball is now in Russia’s court,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

But Russia has not agreed to anything at this point despite Trump threatening sanctions. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he agreed “with the proposals to halt the fighting, but we proceed from the assumption that the ceasefire should lead to lasting peace and remove the root causes of the crisis.” And he questioned if 30 days would simply give the Ukrainian military time to regroup.

Earlier in the day, an aide to Putin reiterated that it wants Ukraine to: (1) concede that Crimea and four other regions are now part of Russia, (2) withdraw troops from lands claimed by Russia and (3) pledge never to join NATO.

The U.S. has already largely been negotiating on Russia’s terms — no NATO for Ukraine, no to getting all of Ukraine’s territory back. So how does Trump respond if Putin flouts his efforts?

3. Schumer blinks. Get ready for the blame and outrage:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) leaves the Democratic caucus lunch at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday in Washington, DC. (Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images)

As if economic turmoil and a high-stakes gamble in trying to end a war weren’t enough, the federal government came pretty close to shutting down. But it looks like a shutdown, which would take place by the end of the day Friday, will be averted and the government will remain open for another six months. That’s because Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday evening that he plans to vote for a GOP-written spending bill.

That’s despite saying a day earlier that Democrats would not help Republicans with this measure because Democrats were left out of negotiations. “Spending should be bipartisan, Republicans chose a partisan path,” Schumer had said. But he traded that line in for a warning about the hand a shutdown, he believes, would give Republicans.

“As bad as the CR is,” Schumer said of the continuing resolution, “allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.” He contended that the GOP would weaponize a shutdown and reopen “only their favorite departments and agencies.”

Schumer’s move opens the pathway for more Democrats to vote in favor of it. Republicans could not pass the bill on their own, because they don’t have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

This will also likely mean even more outrage from a frustrated Democratic base, which has been clamoring for Democratic leadership to do something to try to thwart Trump’s agenda.

NOTE: The government has shut down (either fully or partially) three times since 2013 – twice under Trump and once under President Barack Obama – and come close many other times. The 2019 shutdown, which lasted more than a month, came at a significant cost to the economy. It lowered “the projected level of real GDP in the first quarter of 2019 by $8 billion (in 2019 dollars), or 0.2 percent,” according to the Congressional Budget Office.

4. DOGE keeps on DOGE-ing – but what’s really going on?

The latest target in the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal workforce is the Department of Education. Trump pledged to eliminate the agency, and this week, he got about halfway there. Some 1,300 staffers were fired. Combined with those who have taken buyouts and probationary employees who were let go, the agency only has about half the staff it started with at the beginning of the Trump administration.

But that has led to questions about how efficient the agency will be in its ability to collect educational statistics, administer congressionally mandated funds for special education and low-income food programs and to allow people to apply for student loans. In fact, this week, a student aid website administered by the Education Department was down for several hours after the layoffs.

“I’m really anxious and quite honestly concerned to see whether or not the department is going to be able to follow through and be able to execute all of the programs, including federal student aid,” Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told NPR’s Morning Edition Thursday. And she is someone who is generally in favor of reducing the size of the agency.

The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, says the cuts are in an effort to cut the debt and deficit and make government more efficient. These cuts so far amount to very little in terms of the federal budget, but a lot in terms of people.

And that may be the point. Russ Vought, who is now Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director, said in October, in a video unearthed by ProPublica before a pro-Trump think tank: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

By the way, that DOGE cuts are constituting a drop in the bucket (if that, considering their costs, too) is possibly one reason why Musk this week said his group will take aim at “waste, fraud and abuse” in entitlements, which he called “the big one to eliminate.” But there isn’t likely enough of that within Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid either to make much of a dent in the budget.

5. Kennedy’s mixed message on measles:

Before the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was developed and then licensed in 1963, nearly everyone got measles by the time they were 15. One of the most infectious diseases known to man, it infected three to four million Americans every year with about 400 to 500 dying, 48,000 hospitalized and 1,000 suffering encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Almost 40 years after the vaccine — and its widespread and widely required use — measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Now, though, after the COVID pandemic saw an increase in vaccine hesitancy because of misinformation, one of the country’s most high-profile people, who has been questioning vaccines for years, is in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. During his confirmation hearing, under pressure from people like Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed his past statements on vaccines and his hesitancy about them.

One year-old River Jacobs is held by his mother, Caitlin Fuller, while he receives an MMR vaccine from Raynard Covarrubio, at a vaccine clinic put on by Lubbock Public Health Department on March 1, 2025 in Lubbock, Texas. Cases of Measles are on the rise in West Texas as over 150 confirmed case have been seen with one confirmed death. (Jan Sonnenmair | Getty Images)

But since a measles outbreak in Texas, Kennedy has delivered very mixed messages. While he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview this week that he encourages people to get vaccinated, he also said getting measles gives you more immunity to measles than the vaccine and called himself a “freedom of choice person.” He said, “If people don’t want it, the government shouldn’t force them to do it.”

Despite serious side effects from vaccines being exceedingly rare, Kennedy played those up, something public-health experts called disinformation.

“The measles vaccine is incredibly safe,” Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN. “This is what anti-vaccine activists do is, they play up and try to scare you with the very, very rare side effects and forget to tell you about the horrific effects of the illness.”

Here’s an exhaustive day-by-day look at what happened this week related to Trump and his administration (since last Friday’s list):

Friday, March 7:

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

President Trump delivers remarks at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting at the Business Roundtable headquarters on Tuesday in Washington, DC. Trump addressed the group of CEO’s as his recent tariff implementations have sparked uncertainty that have helped fuel a market sell-off. (Andrew Harnik | Getty Images)

Wednesday

Demonstrators gather outside of the offices of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to protest against mass layoffs and budget cuts at the agency, initiated by the Trump administration and DOGE. (Bryan Dozie | AFP via Getty Images)

Thursday

Friday

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