This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.

As expected, Donald Trump’s second administration delivered a barrage of day one executive orders targeting immigrants and LGBTQ+ folks in particular. The administration took aim at birthright citizenship and “personhood,” proving that rewriting the Fourteenth Amendment is a top priority for the conservative legal movement.

Trump also signed an executive order declaring the United States only recognizes “two sexes, male and female.”

The orders are outrageous and unlawful, and they’re just the beginning of what will surely be an absurd and dangerous tenure for Trump and his team.

Trump’s first day in office and the bonkers executive orders it produced serve as an important reminder for this current age—getting through it will be a marathon, not a sprint. There is a political purpose to the Trump team flooding the zone with unconstitutional nonsense. It’s designed to demoralize opposition, confuse the media, and lurch the Overton window so far to the right that some of the administration’s most egregious policy proposals somehow find themselves into law. Their strategy depends on it.

Just as this authoritarian era did not emerge overnight, it will take a sustained and focused effort to cut through the noise, the violence, and the distractions. Trump’s first day proved as much.