
Something was nagging at Donald Trump when he sat down late last month with Mayor Muriel Bowser to discuss the city that he would soon call home. Graffiti.
The incoming president was preoccupied with spray-painted walls he saw in a tunnel his motorcade sped through in the summer of 2023 on the way to the federal courthouse in Washington, where he pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to overturn the election results. Trump saw graffiti as symbolic of a city in decline, and he told Bowser he intended to take action, according to people briefed on their meeting at Mar-a-Lago.
As Trump prepares to move back into the White House for his second term, he and his senior advisers have vowed to transform the nation's capital in ways both small and large. The president-elect regards Washington as the epicenter of what he sees as his political persecution, and he is determined to make it a more MAGA-friendly place.
Trump has pledged to slash federal government jobs and relocate some agencies far from Washington. He has railed about trash and homeless encampments in the capital, and threatened to override decisions made by city leaders by exercising the federal government's little-used authority over local affairs. He hopes to challenge the city's progressive identity by bringing in thousands of young Trump diehards to work in the federal government.
Longtime residents of deeply Democratic Washington - a city that protested against Trump, took him to court, celebrated his 2020 defeat and gave 92% of its vote to Kamala Harris in November are bracing for what is to come.
Trump is hardly the first president-elect to vow to shake up Washington. Indeed, he campaigned in 2016 on "draining the swamp," borrowing a favorite expression of politicians railing against a federal government bloat. He didn't succeed much at changing the city in his first term, but his advisers contend he has a better shot this time around.
This story is from the January 17, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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This story is from the January 17, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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