Somehow disruption doesn’t begin to cover it. Upheaval might be closer. Revolution maybe. In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming president has in his lifetime.

用“混乱”一词不足以形容。“动荡”或许更贴切。“革命”也不为过。唐纳德·J·特朗普在当选总统不到两周时间里就发起了一场新的运动，试图打破华盛顿的体制，这是他有生之年从未有新任总统尝试过的事。

He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation’s capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it. Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter. Mr. Trump has said that “real power” is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.

他把一颗巨大的手榴弹扔到了国家首都的正中心，然后恶作剧般笑着看谁跑得远，谁会扑上去。可以说，到目前为止，前者比后者多。特朗普说过，“真正的权力”是制造恐惧的能力，他似乎已经做到了这一点。

Mr. Trump’s early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system. If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago. And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.

特朗普在过渡初期的举措相当于对体制的一次代际压力测试。如果共和党人屈服于他的要求，让参议院休会，以便他任命未经确认的人选，那么这将改写两百多年前由治国先贤确立的权力平衡。如果任由他来决定一些最重要的政府职位的人选，他将安排一些忠诚者，而这些人的想法是把他们所领导的部门搅得天翻地覆。

He has chosen a bomb-throwing backbench congressman who has spent his career attacking fellow Republicans and fending off sex-and-drugs allegations to run the same Justice Department that investigated him, though it did not charge him, on suspicion of trafficking underage girls. He has chosen a conspiracy theorist with no medical training who disparages the foundations of conventional health care to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

特朗普选择了一位以挑起冲突著称的后座议员来掌管司法部，此人职业生涯中一直在攻击共和党同僚，并极力否认性丑闻和毒品指控，他将掌管的司法部曾调查他涉嫌贩卖未成年女孩，但并未对他提出指控。他选择了一位没有接受过医学培训的阴谋论者来掌管卫生与公共服务部，此人向来诋毁正统医疗的基础。

2017年，特朗普与节目主持人皮特·海格塞斯一同在白宫录制《福克斯与朋友》节目。

He has chosen a weekend morning television host with a history of defending convicted war criminals while sporting a Christian Crusader tattoo that has been adopted as a symbol by the far right to run the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world. He has chosen a former congresswoman who has defended Middle East dictators and echoed positions favored by Russia to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.

他选择了周末早间电视节目主持人来掌管人类历史上最强大的武装力量，此人曾为已定罪战犯辩护，身上有被极右翼势力作为标志的十字军纹身。他选择了一位前国会议员来领导本国的情报机构，此人曾为中东独裁者辩护，并表达了俄罗斯所乐见的立场。

Nine years after Mr. Trump began upsetting political norms, it may be easy to underestimate just how extraordinary all of this is. In the past, none of those selections would have passed muster in Washington, where a failure to pay employment taxes for a nanny used to be enough to disqualify a cabinet nominee. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has bulled past the old red lines, opting for nominees who are so provocative that even fellow Republicans wondered whether he is trolling them.

特朗普开始颠覆政治规范已有九年，人们可能很容易低估这一切的不同寻常之处。在过去，这些选择中的任何一个都不会在华盛顿通过审核，因为未缴纳保姆的就业税就足以取消内阁提名人选资格。而特朗普却无视了这些过去遵循的底线，选择了一些极具挑衅性的提名人选，甚至让共和党人都怀疑他是否在戏弄他们。

The message to Washington is simple, according to Roger Stone, the longtime Trump friend who relishes his own reputation as a political dirty trickster. “Things are going to be different,” he said by text.

特朗普的老朋友罗杰·斯通自诩为肮脏权术的行家，他认为华盛顿需要明白一个简单的事实：“一切都会变得不同，”他通过短信说道。

To say the least. “There is something in this city, in the imperial capital, that’s changed over the last 48 hours,” Stephen K. Bannon, the self-styled agitator and former Trump White House strategist, said on his podcast last week. “It is a sense that there’s been a seismic shift in the political culture. And, hey, I think they know we’re not going back.”

这还不止。“这座城市，这座帝国之都，在过去48小时内发生了变化，”斯蒂芬·班农上周在他的播客中说。以煽动家自居的班农曾是特朗普的白宫策略师。“人们感觉到政治文化发生了翻天覆地的变化。而且，嘿，我认为他们知道我们不会走回头路。”

At least some in Washington fooled themselves into assuming that Mr. Trump would not go as far as his campaign trail rhetoric. They sighed in relief when he named Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, to be secretary of state instead of Richard Grenell, a combative conservative who argued earlier this year that it was necessary to have “a son of a bitch as the secretary of state.”

至少华盛顿的一些人还在自欺欺人地认为，特朗普不会做到像竞选时的言辞里说的那种程度。当他任命佛罗里达州共和党参议员马可·卢比奥担任国务卿，而不是今年早些时候主张“国务卿需要是一个王八蛋”的好斗保守派理查德·格雷内尔时，他们松了一口气。

But then came the nominations of Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. Republicans gasped out loud at news of Mr. Gaetz’s selection. Even the editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post called Mr. Kennedy “nuts on a lot of fronts.” And the Trump camp was surprised to learn that Mr. Hegseth paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a settlement agreement, although he insists it was a consensual encounter.

但随后，马特·盖茨获司法部长提名，小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪获卫生与公共服务部长提名，皮特·海格塞斯获国防部长提名，塔尔西·加巴德获国家情报总监提名。共和党内部对盖茨的提名感到震惊。甚至鲁珀特·默多克的《纽约邮报》社论委员会也称肯尼迪“在许多方面是疯子”。特朗普阵营对海格塞斯因性侵指控而向一名女性支付赔偿金的消息感到意外，尽管他坚称那是一次自愿的接触。

David Marchick, a co-author of “The Peaceful Transfer of Power,” a history of presidential transitions, and dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University, called the collection of choices unlike any before.

美国大学科戈德商学院院长、《权力的和平转移》一书的作者之一戴维·马奇克称，这一系列选择是前所未有的。

“This is like the ‘Star Wars’ bar scene of nominees,” he said. Mr. Trump’s camp has made clear, he added, that “it’s a serious strategy to blow out the government as an institution because of their belief that it’s become too big, too powerful and represents the deep state.”

他说，“这些形形色色的候选人，就像走进了《星球大战》的酒吧。”他还表示，特朗普的阵营已经明确表示，“因为他们认为政府已经变得过于庞大、过于强大，代表深层政府的利益，所以把政府作为一个机构来打击并不是开玩笑。”

Don Baer, a former White House communications director under President Bill Clinton, said Mr. Trump was challenging the foundations of the American system. “This is a huge moment for Washington, in all sorts of ways,” he said.

曾在克林顿政府担任白宫通讯联络办公室主任的唐·贝尔说，特朗普正在挑战美国体制的基础。“从各个方面来说，这都是华盛顿的一个重大时刻，”他说。

特朗普选择塔尔西·加巴德来领导情报机构，此人曾表达俄罗斯乐见的立场。

Mr. Trump, he added, is amplifying the populist resentment that has grown since the days of the financial crash of 2008 rather than trying to ameliorate it. The eruption in Washington is a goal as he tries to tear down the system, not something to tamp down. “What he’s doing now with these appointments is, ‘You all jump up and down and tear your hair out, but you know what? These are the people I’m going to do it with and I like that it aggravates you,’” Mr. Baer said.

他还说，特朗普正在放大民粹主义的不满情绪，自2008年金融危机以来，这种情绪一直有增无减。在华盛顿掀起轩然大波是他试图摧毁这个体系时的目标之一，而不是为了驯服这个体系。“他现在用这些任命所做的就是，‘让你们气得跳脚，撕扯头发，但你们知道吗？我就打算跟这些人一起来做这件事，我喜欢看你们气急败坏的样子，’”贝尔说。

Amid all the hair-tearing-out, other consequential moves by Mr. Trump have attracted less attention. In tapping Elon Musk to head a new Department of Government Efficiency along with Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr. Trump has handed vast influence over the federal government to a billionaire who profits from billions of dollars in government contracts.

在所有这些令人大为震惊的任命举动中，特朗普的其他重大举措并没有引起太多关注。他任命埃隆·马斯克和维维克·拉马斯瓦米一起负责新的政府效率部，把对联邦政府的巨大影响力交给了一位从价值数十亿美元的政府合同中获利的亿万富翁。

And while heads turned at Mr. Gaetz’s nomination, Mr. Trump tapped three of his own defense lawyers from his various criminal cases to take other top Justice Department positions, pretty much guaranteeing that he never has to worry about scrutiny from federal prosecutors over the next four years.

在盖茨的提名引起关注的同时，特朗普还提名了在他的各种刑事案件中的三位辩护律师担任司法部的其他高级职位，这几乎可以保证他在未来四年里不必担心联邦检察官的审查。

It is a mark of how much has changed since Mr. Trump’s first term that appointees who once generated uproars are now slipping by without much protest. He has learned how to move the spectrum of outrage.

从中可见特朗普的第一个任期以来发生了多大的变化，那些曾经引起轰动的任命，现在却几乎没有引起太多抗议。他已经学会了转移愤怒情绪。

When Mr. Trump first tried to appoint John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican congressman, as director of national intelligence in his previous term, Senate Republicans deemed him too partisan and forced him to withdraw. Mr. Trump responded by making Mr. Grenell the acting intelligence director, which horrified establishment Republicans so much that they eventually confirmed Mr. Ratcliffe after all. Now Mr. Ratcliffe has been chosen for C.I.A. director and is seen as a relatively reassuring pick compared to the others.

特朗普在上一个任期首次试图任命得克萨斯州共和党众议员约翰·拉特克利夫担任国家情报总监时，参议院共和党人认为这个选择的党派色彩过重，迫使他收回任命。作为回应，特朗普让格雷内尔担任代理情报总监，这让共和党建制派非常震惊，最终确认了拉特克利夫的任命。现在，拉特克利夫已被选为中情局局长人选，与其他人选相比，他们被认为是相对让人放心的一个。

Indeed, some Republicans assume that Mr. Trump put forward some of the more contentious nominees to draw attention from the others, making Mr. Gaetz, for instance, a possible sacrificial lamb who can be blocked while the rest slip through. Mr. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing, but he hopes to prevent the release of a House Ethics Committee report into his past.

事实上，一些共和党人认为，特朗普提出一些更具争议的提名人选，是为了转移对另外一些提名者的关注，比如提名盖茨不过是拿他当牺牲品，以便让其他提名者顺利获得确认。盖茨否认自己有不当行为，但他希望阻止众议院道德委员会发布一份关于他过去的调查报告。

“Gaetz won’t get confirmed. Everybody knows that,” former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California toppled last year by Mr. Gaetz and other G.O.P. insurgents, said on Bloomberg Television on Friday. He added that “it’s a good deflection from others.”

“盖茨不会得到确认。前议长凯文·麦卡锡周五在彭博电视上说。这位加利福尼亚州共和党人去年被盖茨和其他共和党的叛逆者赶下台。他补充说，“这是一个转移视线的好办法。”

Others disagreed. “That’s not what’s happening,” Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary for Mr. Trump who broke with him, said on MSNBC. “He is drunk on power right now because he feels like he was given a mandate by winning the popular vote.”

也有人持不同看法。“事实并非如此，”已经与特朗普闹翻的前白宫副新闻秘书莎拉·马修斯在MSNBC上表示。“他现在醉心于权力，因为他觉得自己赢得了普选，所以获得了人民授权。”

In fact, it is not much of a mandate. While Mr. Trump won the popular vote for the first time in three tries, he garnered just 50.1 percent nationally, according to the latest tabulation by The Times, just 1.8 percentage points ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris. When the slow-counting blue giant of California finally finishes tallying its votes, that margin is likely to shrink a bit more. The Cook Report already calculates that his percentage has fallen below 50 percent, meaning he did not win a majority.

事实上，这并不算真正的授权。尽管特朗普在经过三次尝试后首次赢得普选，但据《纽约时报》的最新统计，他在全国范围内仅获得了50.1%的选票，仅比副总统贺锦丽高出1.8个百分点。当加利福尼亚州这个计票缓慢的民主党大本营最终完成计票时，这一差距可能还会进一步缩小。库克报告已经计算出他的得票率已降至不足50%，这意味着他并未赢得多数。

One of Mr. Trump’s superpowers, however, has been acting as if he were more popular than he really is. Despite his modest margins, he has exhibited more dominance of his own party than any president in modern times. And his Senate recess demand will test just how far that dominance will go.

然而，特朗普的超能力之一就是让他看上去比实际情况更受欢迎。尽管他的胜选幅度很小，但他在自己党内的主导地位超出现代历史上的任何一位总统。他提出的参议院休会任命要求将考验这种主导地位可以走多远。

The recess appointment power in the Constitution was designed to let a president temporarily fill vacancies while Congress was out of town in an era when it took weeks or months to travel to Washington. But Mr. Trump wants to use the power to sidestep the Senate’s constitutional duty to advise and consent to appointments.

宪法中的休会任命权旨在让总统在国会议员离开华盛顿时暂时填补空缺，而在制定宪法的时代，前往华盛顿需要数周或数月时间。但特朗普想利用这一权力来规避参议院的宪法职责，即建议和同意任命。

At any other time, it would be hard to imagine the Senate voluntarily surrendering power to a president like that, even one from the same party. But Senate Republican leaders did not rule out the idea after Mr. Trump broached it, and it may be the only way to get Mr. Gaetz and some of the others through. Even if senators do not agree, some conservatives have warned that Mr. Trump may try to employ a little-used provision in the Constitution allowing him to force a recess.

在其他任何时候，都很难想象参议院会自愿将权力交给这样的总统，即使是来自同一党派的总统。但参议院共和党领导人在特朗普提出这个想法后，并没有排除这种可能性，这可能是让盖茨和其他一些提名者获得通过的唯一途径。一些保守派人士警告说，即使参议员们不同意，特朗普可能也会试图利用宪法中很少采用的一项条款，迫使国会休会。

“Trump has promised to be a dictator on Day 1 but has already started before Day 1,” said Tom Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader from South Dakota. “This is a major test to our system of checks and balances. The Congress must demonstrate its commitment to its constitutional role. And it is critical that it does it now. Failure to do so is an acknowledgment that the president’s promise will become the reality.”

“特朗普曾承诺在上任的第一天当一个独裁者，但在第一天之前就已经开始了，”来自南达科他州的前参议院民主党领袖汤姆·达施勒说。“这是对我们的制衡体系的重大考验。国会必须表明它对其宪制职责的承诺。而且现在采取行动至关重要。如果不这样做，就意味着承认总统的承诺将成为现实。