The press in Washington | Donald Trump’s revenge on Washington

Spring 2017. It was beautifully beautiful in Washington. All opportunities were good to go out in the green streets.

Posted at 6:00 a.m.

To put a pink hat with chat ears to denounce the misogyny of President Trump 1.0. To project poop emojis (yes, yes) on the hotel which bore his name a stone’s throw from the White House after he called certain countries, including Haiti, “shitty countries”. To strike in the name of undocumented immigrants.

A downtown bar invented cocktails to which he gave the names of the members of the Trump team who were put to the door as quickly as they had been appointed.

Resistance was everywhere. And she was festive. “Managing is the new brunch,” said Andy Shallal, owner of the Busboys and Poets bookstores at the time, who specialize in the sale of books on social justice and organize events in the same vein.

The distrust was such that Donald Trump left the city almost every weekend to take refuge in his domain of Mar-A-Lago in Florida. He did not spend a second more than necessary in this city of 700,000 people who had voted 90 % for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and who voted 90 % for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Spring 2025. It is always beautifully beautiful in Washington. Azaleas are in bloom. The atmosphere is no longer the same at all. DC the cool, the rebel, the progressive, manifests a little, but it has been reached in the heart since Donald Trump’s return to power. Affected by fear, anxiety.

Preparing for the last-day report was a real headache. Many interlocutors and organizations that gave me an interviews in 2017 in 2017 decline them today, frightened to offend the new administration.

Just as much suggested “Off the Record” conversations. Those who agree to speak with an open face often work on eggs. This is surprising in a country where it is usually particularly easy to interview people of all allegiances.

And this fear is explained. Tens of thousands of federal employees have lost their jobs after the creation of the Department of Government efficiency (DOGE) in January and tens of thousands of others fear being the next on the list. “When I go to a supper on Friday evening, half of the people at the table are on the verge of tears. Or tell the trauma of their dismissal. We are all afraid of losing our livelihood, ”said a longtime washingtonian.

Others fear that the government withdraw the status of charity to their organization, depriving them of a good part of their funding. Researchers and consultants compete in imagination to reformulate the statements of the projects on which they work so that they do not pass under the guillotine of “antiwoke”, read ultra -presenter, which henceforth hold the strings of the Federal Government Stock Exchange.

It’s not just workers who are affected. The capital itself, which has a unique political status in the country, is in the viewfinder of the tenant of the White House. The latter has repeatedly threatened to put the capital on guardianship if the mayor Muriel Bowser does not comply with her requests. Or make cuts in the funds allocated to it.

It was therefore under the constraint that the latter must have resolved in March to make the immense mural disappear with hammer blows in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement, the social movement which rocked the country after the first presidency of Donald Trump and contributed to his electoral defeat in 2020.

This week, the mayor was fighting so that health funding for the poorest in the city was not amputated by 2 billion.

“It is normal for the Washingtonians to be frightened. We don’t have our word to say to the congress. Unlike all the other Americans, there is only one delegate who does not have the right to vote. We are at the mercy of the administration in place, ”deplores Toby Horn, 77, met during a demonstration of 1^is May.

Ideological intimidation seems omnipresent. The Trump administration is attacking the contents of the Smithsonian museums, one of the greatest wealth in the city, as well as world pride (World Pride) which must be held there next month.

The event, which hopes to welcome up to 3 million people, had to relocate concerts and a drag queens show after the managers of the Kennedy Center – recently under the control of Donald Trump – had canceled contracts.

“I moved to Washington because it is a progressive city and I look forward to world pride, but I’m afraid that with everything that is going on, people from abroad no longer want to come. I would understand them, ”laments Laurie Holcomb, also crossed during a demonstration.

President and Director of Destination DC, the organization that promotes tourism and major events in the capital, Elliott Ferguson does not despair. He recalls that the capital faced more than one crisis during its long history of 249 years.

Among the most recent, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Capitole assault by rioters on January 6, 2021 and the COVID-19 which made 88 % of the activities of the city center disappear, he recalls. “Adversity is not something we have never faced. We remain optimistic, ”he told me during an interview where he weighed each of his words. “We have no choice. »»

The presidents pass. Washington DC remains.