Trump’s WashingtonHow President Trump is changing government, the country and politics.Good evening. This week, President Trump honed his maximalist approach to the federal government’s power. We explain how. We’re also looking at how he’s changed the Oval Office, and the latest twist in his long relationship with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. We’ll start with the headlines.
Maximizing his power
When he was running for president last year, Donald Trump and his allies promised to increase the power of the presidency over the rest of the federal government. He has moved aggressively to keep that promise, clashing with courts and steamrolling Congress as he works to stamp out pockets of independence. But it’s not just that Trump wants more power over the federal government. He is also trying to give the federal government more power over society itself. Since Monday, the Trump administration has moved to assert new power over institutions like colleges and banks. He has ordered a surge of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., a city that ostensibly has home rule. He has dialed up pressure on state lawmakers across the country to further shore up his power through redistricting — a goal he is also pursuing with his efforts to redo the census in pursuit of a count that would be more favorable to Republicans. It’s presidential maximalism in action. It’s also an extension of his efforts to punish companies for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and to crack down on law firms and universities. “What this shows is that, it’s sort of soaking in, it’s permeating more and more deeply into various aspects of society,” said Daniel Farber, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who was written about presidential power. The approach, Farber said, is “very contrary to the traditional small government view of conservatives.” Instead, he said, it’s “one that really aims to change both the sort of political system and the culture.” Here are four areas where Trump sought to expand the government’s reach this week. 1. Education. On Thursday, Trump signed a directive requiring the Education Department to collect even more detailed data on college applicants, including information on race, gender, test scores and grade point averages. That creates something conservative activists have long wanted: a role for the federal government in scrutinizing admissions at public and private universities alike, with an eye to ensuring that the use of affirmative action has been firmly stamped out. Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor, told my colleagues that the policy could chill universities’ consideration of race as part of a holistic review of student applications. “It signals the Trump administration’s efforts to depress Black and brown enrollment, and intimidate universities into decreasing Black and brown enrollment,” he said. 2. Banking (well, debanking). Another presidential action on Thursday instructed federal agencies and regulators to try to stop banks from barring customers for what Trump described as political or religious reasons — something that mostly right-leaning groups have complained about, although the evidence is spotty. The order, my colleague Rob Copeland wrote, raised the specter of federal prosecution of banks, because it ordered regulators to refer some complaints about it to the attorney general’s office. 3. Voting. In an attempt to protect Republicans’ House majority — and, in the process, inoculate himself from congressional oversight — Trump is seeking a middle-of-the-decade redrawing of House maps in red states. It is, as my colleague Tyler Pager wrote this week, a test of his power well beyond Washington as he tries to rewrite the rules to increase his political advantage. He also ordered the Commerce Department this week to begin work on a new census that would not include undocumented immigrants, a move that could further shift seats from Democratic states to Republican ones and enshrine an edge for Trump and his allies. 4. Washington, D.C. After Edward Coristine, a member of the Department of Government Efficiency who is better known as Big Balls, was assaulted in Washington, the president ordered a surge of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in the nation’s capital, which has its own police force. He threatened to have the federal government take control of the city of 700,000 people if it did not “get its act together.” (In January, officials announced that violent crime in the city had hit a 30-year low.) Trump, for his part, has denied that he is seeking to grow the power of the presidency and the government. He says he’s simply asserting the power that’s already granted him, and doing exactly what he promised he would as president. “I don’t feel I’m expanding it,” Trump told Time magazine in April. “I think I’m using it as it was meant to be used.” Got a tip? THE MOMENT
A different kind of maximalismThe New York Times photographer Doug Mills has been taking pictures in the Oval Office for a very long time. He has the space pretty much memorized. But it’s been constantly changing lately. It keeps getting shinier as Trump turns the people’s house into his own. “Every time we go in there, the president has added some sort of new decoration,” Doug told me. “Whether it’s gold leaf on the doors, gold leaf on the mantle piece or even the 24-karat gold leaf on the ceiling, it just continues to grow.” On Wednesday, when Trump entered the Oval Office to announce a $100 billion investment by Apple, Doug was struck by the way he was framed by gold details on the door and the walls that hadn’t been there earlier this summer. It makes Trump’s office look like an extension of Mar-a-Lago, and it leaves the easel and the posters in the shot — representing the business at hand — looking oddly quotidian.
ONE LAST THING When frenemies share an enemyThey’ve been friends. They’ve been enemies. Now, the interests of President Trump and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York may be aligning as they both seek to stop Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, from being elected in November. My colleague Nicholas Fandos has the latest on their on-again, off-again relationship. They have been two of the leading players in New York for decades, a pair of Queens boys who love power — and who have found their paths crossing once more in the race for mayor of their hometown. My colleagues and I reported this week that Trump is weighing whether to intercede in the colorful race to try to stop Mamdani, a democratic socialist. One of the challengers he could help? Cuomo, the Democrat who is running as an independent four years after resigning as governor in scandal. We reported that the two men have privately spoken about the race by phone, citing sources briefed on the call, though they both claimed otherwise. Some of Trump’s associates are pushing the president to help consolidate the field of candidates behind a single one not named Mamdani. It is not clear if Trump will actually get involved or whom he would support, but there is no question about which candidate he shares the longest track record with. Both men are scions of influential New York families (their fathers knew each other well) and both became cutthroat power brokers in their own right. When Cuomo married, Trump sent a video for his bachelor party; Cuomo attended the wedding of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. The two men sparred throughout Trump’s first term, and the fighting grew more intense during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when New York was an epicenter of the outbreak. Since running for mayor, Cuomo has mostly been critical of the president. But Cuomo told business leaders behind closed doors this week that he thought he could work with Trump to protect the city. Their relationship, Cuomo quipped, was something like a “dysfunctional marriage” — one that neither of them seems quite ready to quit. Nicholas Fandos and Jacob Reber contributed to this newsletter. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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