If you feel like you just got off the Tilt-A-Whirl, join the club.

In its early months, the Trump administration has been on a remarkable run in education. Its “move fast and break things” ethos has entailed taking a cudgel to DEI, the Department of Education, elite universities, and federal research. Some disruptions have been controversial, but they’ve generally occurred at a remove from the daily lives of most Americans. You could say much the same about USAID, diplomacy, and even immigration enforcement.

Then came “Liberation Day.” Trump’s tariff regime cratered the stock market and wiped out trillions of dollars in retirement holdings. A week later, of course, after adamantly insisting his beautiful new tariffs weren’t going away . . . Trump suspended most of them (while supersizing the levies on China). The suspension triggered a historic “relief rally” on Wall Street, but it also made the whole rash, rushed exercise seem quite farcical despite the sobering stakes. We’re not out of the woods yet, as the announced reprieve is just 90 days. If fully implemented, the tariffs would yield the highest tariff rate in over a century, significantly boost inflation, and amount to the largest tax increase since the 1960s. Even before they were announced, just 23 percent of Americans said Trump’s policies were improving their financial circumstances (down from 42 percent in January).

The Financial Times’s chief data reporter noted in an X thread (with more than 2 million views) that economic uncertainty now rivals that at the height of the pandemic, consumer expectations are the worst in over 40 years, and inflationary expectations are as high as they were at peak inflation under Biden. Even as Trump’s sudden reversal helped the markets bounce partway back, the dogmatism and sloppiness on display have raised questions—and sparked surprising criticism from Trump allies like Ted Cruz, Bill Ackman, and Elon Musk.

Now, Trump has demonstrated an uncanny ability to overcome long odds for a decade. And it’s been years since chaos became as much a part of the Trump brand as mammoth hotel marquees.

But, if 401(k)s keep shrinking, recession looms, or inflation takes off, there could be big implications for Trump’s agenda—especially his ambitious education program. His efforts to take on higher education in particular are high-profile and perceived as unprecedented. They’ve benefited enormously from Trump’s relative popularity and the sense that he’s taking care of business. That could change. After the tumultuous tariff rollout, Michael Brendan Dougherty, an erstwhile Trump ally, warned, “Presidents need to carefully protect their image as competent leaders when pursuing their signature policies . . . The more that a president seems to be on an ideological crusade—whether Clinton before 1994, Bush before 2006, or Obama before 2010—the more likely he is to be hammered for it.”

Trump’s early wins could prove fragile. His team has thus far struggled to explain how it intends to make a leaner Department of Education work effectively, and it has trampled the law in levying its extraordinary demands on universities. As a result, the administration risks being blamed for all manner of problems with FAFSA, student loans, or IDEA. The concessions it’s wrung from colleges could readily be reversed in the courts. On that count, the tariff rollout offered a disconcerting window into how this White House does business. No one inside or outside the Oval Office knew what the policy would be until hours before the announcement. Senior officials repeatedly disagreed about whether the tariffs were supposed to be permanent or what they were even designed to accomplish. The president said the tariffs would be reciprocal. They’re not. The plan featured sloppy math, rates distorted by typos, and new levies on two uninhabited islands. Oh, and the administration embraced this strategy with little forethought as to how things would play out. As the New York Times’s David Sanger reported last week, “Several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.”

If Trump’s signature initiative was this chaotic and ill-conceived, it’s tough to be confident that there’s been a lot of quiet deliberation about the education tsunami. This will matter as the administration fends off litigation that seeks to unwind its staffing cuts, university sanctions, or directives regarding gender ideology. Its DEI guidance (which is likely to encounter legal troubles for not distinguishing race-based policies from curricular content) will face added challenges if already-skeptical judges conclude the administration’s homework is sloppy. Universities will be more reticent to make concessions if attorneys can prove the administration’s moves are ad hoc and likely to come apart under scrutiny. It’s not just that the chaos offends those of us who worry about things like due process or attention to detail—it increases the likelihood that otherwise meritorious measures will be upended.

While we’ve seen that Trump’s base is likely to stay with him no matter what, and while he’s been aided by a quiescent Republican Congress, his education agenda this year has thus far benefited from broader public support and an emphasis on 70–30 issues like DEI, gender, and the problems with higher ed. If that support softens, Team Trump’s attacks on Columbia or Harvard could start to look less like an overdue takedown and more like vandalism by the same team that’s trashing the economy. Such a shift would embolden the opposition; make it harder to win grudging cooperation from colleges or schools; and energize opponents who’d prefer to fight in court, hunker down, and count on Democrats to roar back in ’26.

Recall that Biden’s agenda was undone by out-of-control immigration, runaway inflation, and an obdurate refusal to acknowledge those problems or change course. That sapped Biden’s political capital and encouraged governors and CEOs to dig in rather than go along. Now, there are big implications for everything Biden attempted, from student loan “forgiveness” to policies governing women’s sports. With Trump back at the helm, public support and careful selection of targets have, so far, driven the White House’s remarkable campaign to shrink the U.S. Department of Education, combat DEI, and reshape elite higher education.

But, as Yogi Berra could’ve said, political winning streaks only continue until they don’t.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”