Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Good evening. Tonight, my colleague, Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent, is evaluating an extraordinary week of political division. But first, let’s start with the headlines. — Jess Bidgood

A week of deepening divides

	By Shane Goldmacher

If there was ever the faintest hope that the gruesome assassination of the political activist Charlie Kirk last week might shake the nation from its current spiraling state of division, it has quickly been dashed by the events of the last week.

It all added up to an exceptionally ugly stretch just a week after an assassination upended the political world and punctuated the increasing and unnerving cadence of political violence in America.

Tempers are always flaring in Washington. But the current level of vitriol has felt especially nasty and intense at a moment when the threat of using the full powers of the federal government for retribution has become more clear and present.

Even former President Barack Obama sounded more downbeat than usual during an appearance on Tuesday in Pennsylvania where he reflected on the two decades since his breakout speech declaring there was not a red America and blue America, but “one people.”

“I deeply believed, and I still do, that we’re just less divided than our politics would indicate,” he began. But Obama soon pivoted to say that “this nationalized ideological struggle” had deepened and “seeped into us through our phones and addled our brains.”

Trump has long since dispensed with the notion that he sees his job as president to serve as a healer or seeker of unity.

“I couldn’t care less,” Trump said on Fox News last week when asked how the country comes back together, acknowledging the statement would “get me in trouble.”

Instead, he has been focused on cracking down on the “radical left” — a catchall that can sometimes mean anyone opposed to him.

Just before Trump left for a brief trip to England, he jousted on the White House lawn with the reporter Jonathan Karl of ABC News after Karl asked whether hate speech is free speech. “Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech so maybe they’ll have to go after you,” Trump told him.

(Trump was referencing an earlier decision by ABC News to settle a defamation case with a donation to Trump’s presidential library.)

The next day, ABC announced it was pulling Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after Kimmel had mocked Trump’s mourning for Kirk, outraging conservatives and critics who accused him of giving an inaccurate description of the politics of the man accused of killing Kirk. The move was especially notable because it came soon after the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, had suggested the agency could take action.

Some conservatives who not long ago warned of the dangers “cancel culture” suddenly cheered on what they called “consequence culture” to target private individuals and public figures for comments about Kirk. And the future of free speech — whether it is bad speech, dumb speech or even hate speech — appeared very much up for debate.

“They’re getting a license,” Trump said of broadcasters, complaining about the coverage of him as he flew on Air Force One. He added: “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

Stephen Colbert, whose own show was canceled and will air its final episodes next year, warned with just a touch of humor about the precedent set by Kimmel’s suspension.

“With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch,” Colbert said on his show. “If ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naïve. And clearly they’ve never read the children’s book ‘If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel.’”

Still, not all conservatives, or even Kimmel critics, were aligned with Trump and Carr.

“Let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying ‘We don’t like what you the media have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas warned on his podcast on Friday.

The vitriol permeated Capitol Hill, where fears of violence directed toward lawmakers have intensified.

Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, spent days attacking Omar in highly personal terms on X and trying to censure her — not just over some of her comments about Kirk, but also over the words in a video she reposted.

The measure was ultimately defeated because four Republicans voted against it — including one, Representative Cory Mills of Florida, whom Democrats had threatened with a censure resolution if the one against Omar had passed. Omar called the vote a victory for the First Amendment even as one Republican lawmaker questioned the notion of religious pluralism embedded within it.

“We need to stop pretending Islam is compatible with American values,” Representative Randy Fine, Republican of Florida, wrote on X.

It was just as ugly on the other side of the Capitol, where the oversight hearings of Patel, the F.B.I. director, devolved into shouting matches and name-calling.

“You may be in charge of the F.B.I. but I am not afraid of you sir,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey shouted at one point.

Mr. Patel would go on to call Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, a “political buffoon at best” while Mr. Schiff called Mr. Patel “nothing more than an internet troll.”

And at a time when compromise is needed to fund the government, that, too felt far away. On Friday, House Republicans passed a plan to keep the government open past the end of the month. But Senate Democrats blocked it.

If the two sides cannot reconcile their differences, the federal government is hurtling toward a shutdown with little time to spare.

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ON THE AIR

Trump antagonists

A group of anti-Trump activists are trying to rally public objection to the administration’s efforts to crack down on speech in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. My colleague Jennifer Medina has more.

The ad opens with a montage of Republicans blaming the left and Democrats for Charlie Kirk’s killing last week, then flashes to Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, threatening to “take away your freedom.” The conclusion leaves no room for interpretation: “This all leads to fascism.”

It is the very thing Trump and his allies have been warning political opponents not to do.

The ad comes from a new group, the Save America Movement, whose leaders say they want to fight Trump with what they call “counter-propaganda.” Two of its leaders — Mary Corcoran, a former public relations executive and Steve Schmidt, a former top aide to John McCain who co-founded (and later left) the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project — are not currently impressed with either party.

They view Trump’s Republican Party with utter contempt, and fault Democrats for failing to push back effectively on what they see as an existential threat to democracy in Trump’s efforts to stifle speech he doesn’t like and target political opponents for punishment.

And as the Trump administration threatens to crack down on groups that criticize their policies, the group is planning to release its “fascism” television ads on Fox News in Washington, D.C., next week. Another ad, scheduled to air in Texas this weekend, depicts a fictional universe where a schoolboy is forced to pledge allegiance to Trump instead of the American flag.

So far, the group has raised $4 million for their venture, though they hope to use location-targeting technology to spend efficiently, such as serving ads to military, immigration and law enforcement personnel who have or could be drawn into enforcing aspects of Trump’s agenda to “remind them of their ethical obligations.”

The group also plans to create “Liberty Vans” to patrol for immigration raids in Los Angeles and other cities. The vans will be staffed with a lawyer, pastor and camera operator to monitor and de-escalate the raids targeting undocumented immigrants.

In Washington, the group also paid for traveling billboards criticizing the administration and placed the messages in neighborhoods designed to get attention from Trump and his allies.

THE MOMENT

A royal touch

If you took the quiz we included in Wednesday’s newsletter about the etiquette of meeting the British royal family, you’ll know that it is frowned upon to touch the monarchs on their back. Even a near miss, the quiz pointed out, has prompted fury in the tabloids.

Enter President Trump.

My colleague Doug Mills, who traveled to London to document Trump’s second state visit to England, captured this image of Trump appearing to pat King Charles III on the back. (He’s certainly not the first to breach etiquette; Michelle Obama and President Joe Biden both touched Queen Elizabeth II without diplomatic incident.)

Doug told me he didn’t see any reaction to the president’s gesture. And the fact that he could see it at all was unusual: A member of the royal staff told him told him that a press photographer hasn’t been given access to the floor of the royal banquet in 40 years.

The royal family had pulled out all the stops as they sought to woo Trump, including a 164-foot table for 160 guests.

“I’ve photographed President Trump and many formal occasions,” Doug told me, “but nothing matched this occasion.”

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