The "TACO" shorthand for thinking about Trump is not just annoying as an acronym - I also think it misreads the moment. I think it grows out of confusion that comes with being in what I'm thinking of as The Warp Zone.

In his first 3-4 months Trump was hyperaggressive on almost every front. He blew through some quasi-law in the form of bedrock norms (think "the presumption of regularity" in court and relations with Congress) as well as a meaningful amount of hard law.

But since then he has hit some hard constraints that require political tradeoffs even in his narrow authoritarian conception of what it means to hold power. Markets crashed, courts repudiated him, the public got activated, efforts on Israel-Iran-Gaza/Ukraine got stuck, Congress started dealing.

Tons of major initiatives are in limbo as other players show Trump their mettle and he (and his court) mulls over/fights over whether to apply more brute force or not. They tried to warp us into a new domestic and political universe and are hitting turbulence in the warp zone.

I would not assume they will "chicken out" on any major piece of this. I would assume they are going to carefully evaluate just how hard each constraint actually is and have some kind of negotiation on which one to try and blow through.