Trump’s WashingtonHow President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.Good evening. Tonight, I’m looking at how President Trump, ever a transactional businessman, has demanded foes and allies alike show him the money. We’re also covering a worrying trend for Democrats. We’ll start with the headlines.
Pay up
Seven months into the second Trump administration, the president has picked fights with colleges, law firms, trading partners and private businesses, threatening them with investigations, tariffs or other consequences as he seeks to enact his agenda. And he has also offered them a simple way out of their Trump-instigated troubles, one that would hardly seem out of place in the clubby, mob-connected Manhattan he came up in: Pay up. And so they are. One by one, the president’s foes — and even some of his purported allies — are agreeing to spend big on his terms, either so they can go about their business or avoid something worse. Some of the president’s critics see it as nothing less than extortion. New reporting from my colleagues shows that Trump personally interceded as his aides negotiated with Columbia University, insisting they secure a $200 million payment on top of the policy changes it had already committed to make. And it’s not just Columbia.
It is not unusual for the federal government to reach settlements with entities it has investigated as they seek to avoid trials or other drawn-out proceedings. But it is unusual for a president to personally — and sometimes publicly — push for such payments himself with the full force of the federal government behind him. The approach, however, is consistent with the highly personalized and transactional approach Trump honed over his decades in New York. To him, leverage was everything, money is power — and he always looked for a way to come out on top. “The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have,” Trump and Schwartz wrote. “Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.” Interestingly, our reporting shows that Trump is not always concerned with the details of where exactly the payments go. Columbia agreed to pay its settlement directly to the U.S. Treasury; Brown, by contrast, will direct its money toward state work force development programs. It seemed to be enough that the administration had forced the university to pay somebody. “He learned this at his father’s knee,” said Tim O’Brien, a journalist who has written a biography of Trump. “Money is a scorecard, and it’s a very easy way to demarcate who’s in control, who has the power, and who wins.”
IN HIS WORDS Trump escalates his campaign against the FedPresident Trump used social media today to demand that a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors resign. My colleague Minho Kim explains. You may have heard President Trump’s complaints about Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve he appointed during his first term. Over the past seven months, Trump has ramped up his attacks on Powell for not lowering interest rates. On Wednesday, he demanded that Lisa Cook, a Democratic appointee and the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors, “must resign, now!!!” His call for Cook’s resignation amplified unconfirmed allegations fueled by Bill Pulte, a staunch Trump ally and the head of the agency that oversees mortgage lenders, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a letter posted to social media on Wednesday, Pulte urged a criminal investigation against Cook. The public attacks on Cook signal Trump’s willingness to leverage various parts of the federal government to influence monetary policy. Experts long have warned that interfering with the Fed and its independence could bring about catastrophic economic and financial consequences, Tony Romm, Ben Casselman and Colby Smith report. Got a tip? BY THE NUMBERS
Few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it. My colleague Shane Goldmacher found that Democrats are bleeding that kind of support. I asked him to share one key figure that tells the story. The Times published a new analysis today of the voter registration trends all across America, and it was bad news everywhere for the Democratic Party. There are 30 states, plus Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. Democrats lost ground compared with Republicans in every one of them. But as I culled through the data with my colleague Jonah Smith, one statistic jumped out that reveals the scale of the decline. And that is the share of people newly registering to vote who decided to become Democrats versus Republicans (many, of course, choose to remain unaffiliated with any party). In 2018, Democrats had accounted for 63 percent of voters who choose one of the two main parties. By 2024, the Democratic Party’s share had shrunk to less than 48 percent. In other words, Republicans went from being a distinctive minority of new registrants to an outright majority in just six years. Read more: Five takeaways from the analysis.
ONE LAST THING How tariffs affect one very special cheeseIf there is one cheese I love most in the world, it is Stilton, a creamy blue cheese that comes from the Midlands in England, where my mother’s family is from. (It traditionally comes in jars, which were heavily featured as floral vessels at my wedding after my godmother painstakingly collected dozens for the purpose.) So I watched with great interest this video, in which Eshe Nelson, a business reporter in London, explained just how American tariffs are affecting the entirely British production of my favorite cheese. There are only four producers who still make Stilton, and the American market represents a huge opportunity for them. But British cheese now faces new tariffs of 10 percent — on top of existing tariffs. That is likely to further drive up the cost of Stilton in America, where it was already more expensive than in Britain. Makers of Stilton are well aware that the high prices could turn off American buyers. 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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