On his first full day as President, Donald Trump accelerated his whirlwind reshaping of a new America; he also encountered his first pushback from those seeking to slow the tidal wave of change.
Mr Trump appears to be revelling in the chaos he has unleashed as he seeks to enact every promise he can as quickly as he can to keep faith with those who voted for him.
He has unnerved some by pushing as hard and as fast as he can across the spectrum of his agenda, but that is what he was elected to do and, despite the complaints of his critics, that is what he has a mandate for.
Trump supporters have hailed the record-setting pace of executive orders and announcements as the new President continued at full speed to scrap Biden-era policies from gender to environment, to trade, to energy, to health, the law and immigration.
The latest thunderbolt was a tech joint venture to create at least $US100bn to power artificial intelligence to help the US compete against China for global leadership on AI.
This follows his sweeping decision to grant clemency to all of the almost 1600 people involved in the January 6 invasion of the Capitol, including several far-right extremists.
Yet already we are seeing the pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces in the new America sizing each other up.
In Washington, Bishop Mariann Budde angered the President during an interfaith service by brazenly calling on him to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now”, naming immigrants, LGBTQ people and those e fleeing war zones.
The President looked stony-faced and later said sarcastically that the service was “not too exciting, was it?”
On the legal front, multiple lawsuits were launched across the country to challenge the legality of some of Mr Trump’s most sweeping executive orders. Several states sued the administration to block an order that refuses to recognise the US-born children of illegal immigrants as citizens.
This will be just the beginning of numerous lawsuits to try to challenge the legality of the promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants and the use of US troops as part of border control.
Elsewhere, a major lawsuit was launched against billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” claiming that it violates federal transparency rules.
More legal challenges will be launched this week as Trump opponents seek to argue that he has exceeded his powers with many of his executive orders.
None of this is unexpected, but it heralds the beginning of a major fight between a determined President who enjoys a mandate for change, and anti-Trump forces determined to either slow or cripple whatever parts of his agenda they can.
This battle will be a defining feature of Mr Trump’s first 100 days in office and it will help to determine the limits of what is possible as the President seeks to reform the cultural fabric of the country.
Internationally, Mexico, Canada and the EU have signalled that they will push back strongly against Mr Trump’s threatened tariffs, which for Mexico and Canada could be up to 25 per cent.
Meanwhile Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the rest of the world would not alter its course on climate change because of Mr Trump. And Panama’s president wrote to the UN Security Council to protest against Mr Trump’s comments about reclaiming the Panama Canal.
Mr Trump is using the threat of tariffs as a starting point for negotiations to secure a better trade deal for the US than exists.
He is unlikely to impose his threatened tariffs against any country in full without first giving those countries an opportunity to offer some form of concessions: in other words, to make a deal.
He has started his presidency exactly as he promised, by introducing a raft of changes that he rightly predicted “will turn heads”.
On many new policies, especially on immigration, environment, workplace and gender, it is unclear how far Mr Trump can go legally without supporting legislation from congress.
What is already clear is that Mr Trump is a President on a mission: he wants to fast-forward the political process like never before to deliver what he promised to the majority of Americans who voted for him.
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