You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
News Analysis
The new president has moved with lightning speed to purge officials he deems disloyal and rid agencies of policies he considers liberal.
By Peter Baker
Peter Baker is covering his sixth presidency and reported from Washington
Jan. 29, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET
When he took office last week, President Trump said he would measure his success in part by “the wars we never get into.” But he has eagerly waged a full-fledged assault on his own government.
In his first eight days in office, Mr. Trump mounted a lightning blitz against the federal government that has the nation’s capital in an uproar. He has moved quickly and aggressively to eliminate pockets of resistance in what he calls “the deep state” and put his own stamp on far-flung corners of the bureaucracy.
It has been a campaign of breathtaking scope and relentless velocity, one unlike any new president has tried in modern times. It has been a blend of personal and political as he seeks revenge against those who investigated him or his allies, while simultaneously demolishing the foundations of the modern liberal state and asserting more control than he or any of his predecessors had in the past.
Mr. Trump has purged perceived enemies from a range of agencies; begun to rid the government of diversity, environmental, gender and other “woke” policies that he objects to; sought to punish those who acted against his interests in the past; and fired independent inspectors general charged with guarding against potential corruption and abuse by his administration. His directive to temporarily freeze trillions of dollars of federal spending touched off a firestorm and prompted a judge to block him, for now.
Mr. Trump presents this effort as a fundamental reorientation of government and politics, in effect reversing generations of change to return to a different bygone era. “We’re forging a new political majority that’s shattering and replacing Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for over 100 years,” he told House Republicans at their retreat this week.
Never mind his faulty math — Roosevelt was first elected 92 years ago — Mr. Trump has approached his mission more systematically and methodically than he ever did in his chaotic first term, when he became the first U.S. president who had never served in public office or the military.