Blood was spilled as Trump celebrated his 80^th birthday on Sunday 14 June. The White House South Lawn played host to seven mixed martial arts fights in a mediated spectacle of violence and machismo, all under the banner of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) 250. Many analysts have hailed the event as a model of how populists connect: by ostentatiously embracing “low” culture. In this telling, Trump showcased his (constructed) affinity with the people by breaking with social convention and bringing ‘human cock-fighting’ into perhaps the most hallowed site of establishment power. In the terms of social theorist, Pierre Ostiguy, this was a perfect example of “flaunting the low”.

But those analysts are missing something. While UFC 250 painted Trump and “the people” as being side by side, it also set them apart. It broadcast that Trump and UFC fans share a cultural taste. But it also throws into spectacular relief the towering social hierarchy which separates them. In the picture painted on that Sunday night, Trump was above, not a part of, the people. This should come as no surprise. Contrary to how theorists of populism often read Trump, this has been a key part of his political practice all along.

How political leaders have embraced “low” culture

The notion of flaunting the low emerged as scholars grappled with how undeniably elite figures, from former Italian President Silvio Berlusconi to Trump himself, could associate themselves with the people rather than the elite. They might own business empires or rub shoulders with the well-to-do, this thinking went, but they could focus on the low cultures which they shared with the people. Berlusconi played up his tastes in women and sport. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro wore football shirts in the president’s office. Pro-Brexit UK politician, Nigel Farage kept drinking pints to camera. Ostiguy called this the flaunting of the low, because it was ostentatious, and often transgressive. Swearing in public or even espousing xenophobic sentiments could bring alleged low culture practices into places from which they were normally excluded by social convention.

It’s hard to deny that something analogous was at work at UFC 250. Mixed martial arts, with its grit, violence, braggadocio and hyper-masculinity is certainly far apart from some American elite cultures, whether that of East Coast WASP traditionalism, or West Coast progressivism. And as others have remarked, it dovetails with Trump’s wider approach to politics, from his taste for domination to his warrior-politician aspirations. Altogether, holding UFC 250 at the White House is the sort of low cultural intrusion which Ostiguy and others had in mind, in violent, hyper-masculine form.

Commentators have said as much. Trump family biographer Gwenda Blair belaboured how UFC 250 transgressed elite culture. She told the Guardian that it was an “anti-elite, anti-upper-crust, anti-upper-class event. It’s on the White House lawn? That is rubbing everybody’s face in it. It’s a version of bragging.” Alexander Marriotti, a specialist in the history of Roman gladiators focused on how UFC 250 enabled Trump to assert his links to the people. “There’s nothing between the politician and the average person,” he said, “but if the average person is into football or UFC, well, there’s a great connection… a strength of your current president is the ability to come across as an average person.”

How Trump shows he is above his popular supporters

What these analyses miss is that even as Trump was connecting with a popular constituency at UFC 250, he was separating himself from it too. To begin with, consider the setting. While UFC 250 was ostensibly part of the 250^th anniversary celebrations, it was, simultaneously, held in honour of Trump’s 80^th birthday. For his 79^th, he had held a notorious military parade. Like a king hosting a joust, he had centred himself over others and elevated himself above others.

The same theme ran through Trump’s entrance. Once the crowd was assembled, Trump made a choreographed walk, accompanied by UFC’s Dana White, down the so-called Hall of Fame to the Southern Portico, where he paused to salute. He then proceeded along a red carpet lined by a military honour guard, and finally to his cage-side seat. Trump and the UFC fan base came together on the South Lawn, but this series of markers underscored their separateness.

The same hierarchical difference was encoded in dress. Many of the fans assembled under “the Claw” and on the Ellipse, in keeping with UFC culture, were thoroughly dressed down. Trump, in his usual oversized navy suit and tie, cut a striking contrast.

“P20260614DT-1432” by The White House, United States Government Work

Trump’s apartness from the wider crowd was reinforced by those sat around him. He was immediately surrounded not by fans but by a coterie of elite guests. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and podcaster Joe Rogan both paid their respects to him. Vice-President J.D Vance and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were sat nearby. This was a spectacle viewed by both the low and the high.

Some of this distinction, of course, is all but culturally unavoidable for a sitting president. It is hard to imagine what it would be for a president to make a quiet entrance to such an event, for instance. Yet much of it is not. Plenty of former presidents have dressed down for sporting occasions. Trump did not need to walk down a red carpet or surround himself with billionaires and media stars.

This is how Trump has long chosen to use sporting events. From his who-is-who appearances at the US Open, to his long association with World Wrestling Entertainment, Trump has played up rather than played down his highest-of-the-high status. To flip Ostiguy’s phrase, at UFC 250, Trump was flaunting the high as much as he was flaunting the low.

As a consequence, when Trump interacted with fighters in the Octagon or members of the crowd, what was thrown into relief was not only connection, but separation. When 28-year-old Josh Hokit, naked except for a cap and shorts, leant down to hang his chain of victory around Trump’s octogenarian neck, creatures from two different worlds seemed to be meeting.

The UFC 250 event certainly drew a connection between Trump and the assembled UFC fighters and fans. But it was a connection that stretched across a yawning chasm of social difference. Many have drawn out the parallels between UFC 250 and the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome. What has been missed, in this analogy, is that they too were games in which hierarchical differences were on full display. Plebeians, patricians and, later, emperors, appeared in the same place, while remaining apart.

Trump has created his own form of elite “high” culture

UFC 250 is also about interpreting Trump more widely. Many still analyse Trump through the lens of populism: a construction of a struggle between “the people” and “the elite,” where the leader of the people stands with the former. What I argue in recent work  is that this has never been the right lens through which to see Trump.

We should see UFC 250 in the lengthy catalogue of Trump’s use of sporting events. That long history should serve as a reminder that Trump has long presented himself in elite terms. He has ”low tastes” in Big Macs and Diet Coke. He is dismissive of high intellectual and arts culture. Yet this has not been a flaunting of the low.

Instead, it has been a reinvention of the high in his own image. From his gilded New York penthouse to Trump Tower, from his faux-Versailles Oval Office makeover, to his endless projections of personal political power, Trump has embraced his own version of highness and presented himself as higher than any other. Recognising that he does throws into relief how deeply inegalitarian principles run through his ideas and may be crucial to understanding why his poll numbers keep slipping.

Polls show that the public disapprove of Trump’s high-culture vanity projects even more than they disapprove of UFC 250. Ultimately, the more Trump presents himself as aloof from the people, the harder it is becoming to claim that he feels their everyday material struggles. That, perhaps, is part of why his approval ratings on inflation and the economy keep falling.

• This article draws on the paper, “Populism’s elite-leader problem: From Bukele, Magufuli, and Trump to a theory of popular elitisms” in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations.
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The post At the UFC 250 White House event Trump flaunted the high, not the low first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

On 18 May the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to provide compensation to Donald Trump’s allies who might have been “unfairly” targeted by the previous Biden administration. The backlash against President Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund was swift and bipartisan, and rightly so. Corruption concerns were obvious from the start. A president plainly seeking to distribute public money to political allies naturally invited charges of self-dealing and constitutional abuse. It is no surprise the administration dropped the plan a few weeks later, which was later indefinitely blocked by a federal judge.

Lawfare against government officials is not a new problem

Still, the president was pointing out a real problem. Legal expenses from investigations and prosecutions can be financially ruinous. When these investigations are justified, that’s a steep but fair price to pay. But legal defence is equally expensive when motives are ulterior. Lawfare against government officials, meaning the strategic abuse of law and courts for political gain, can end careers, deter public service, and distort democratic accountability. Trump’s fund was the wrong solution, but he was right to address chronic and worsening lawfare in American politics.

Nearly 30 years ago, legal scholar Kathleen Clark documented a growing post-Watergate problem: government officials and aides were incurring huge legal fees in legal defences against alleged wrongdoing, even when they had acted legally or were not direct targets of the investigation. During Whitewater and related investigations, numerous Clinton administration aides left government after accumulating unpaid legal bills many times larger than their salaries.

The available remedies were inadequate then, and they remain inadequate now. Under some conditions, the Department of Justice can provide counsel to officials sued in an individual capacity, but naturally the DOJ is often reluctant to do so when the government itself is investigating the official. Congress can reimburse legal fees through ad hoc legislation, as it did for former head of the White House Travel Office Billy Dale after he was acquitted of embezzlement. But that process is rare and highly politicized.

Since 1996, members of Congress have been allowed to create legal expense funds, subject to contribution limits, donor restrictions, and disclosure rules. Yet these funds do not solve the financing problem. They introduce conflict-of-interest risks and tend to help only prominent politicians with national donor networks.

Legal defence is too expensive for most officials and politicians

In our research, we obtained and analysed all the quarterly legal expense fund disclosures for House members on file at the Legislative Resource Center in Washington, covering funds operating between 2007 and 2023. The pattern is clear: members rarely raise enough to support a sustained defence. Total contributions are commonly in the tens of thousands of dollars — trivial compared with the cost of a serious federal investigation. Many legal expense funds are opened only as a last resort by officials already facing severe political crisis. Others open and close without meaningful contributions or expenditures.

And legal defence is very expensive. The market price of elite representation in Washington has risen far faster than ordinary incomes, with top defence counsel now frequently billing above $3,000 per hour. As one mantra among lawyers at elite firms has it: “I will know I have made it when I can afford to hire myself as an attorney.” Most public officials and aides cannot.

Other payment channels are constrained. Pro bono representation can violate ethics rules. Campaign funds generally cannot be converted to personal use and can be used for legal fees only when the legal work is sufficiently connected to campaign or official activity. Party committees may help, but only when doing so serves their political interests. Legal insurance exists in limited forms but often excludes or caps precisely the matters officials fear most.

The effects of steep legal fees are uneven: devastating for some officials, survivable for others, and inherently shaped by money and power. In this way, legal exposure from holding office may widen the wealth gap between members of congress and their constituents, which we know undermines political representation.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

How lawfare becomes a political weapon

Now add in lawfare. Lawfare uses (the spectre of) prosecution as a political weapon. Its purpose is not necessarily to secure convictions, but rather to impose an exorbitant cost of defence.

This matters for democracy. Voters tasked with electing politicians are limited in their ability to observe their effort, competence, or whether bad outcomes reflect politician misconduct or external events that they cannot control. Allegations in a court of law can help reveal wrongdoing of officeholders, but lawsuits can also mislead the public. If weak or strategic claims are timed for maximum electoral damage, voters may punish responsible officials or force them to divert time and resources away from governing.

These risks lend support for something like a publicly financed anti-weaponization fund. If lawfare works by making legal defence unaffordable, then setting aside public money for defence can change the incentives of both sides. It can make weak, strategic lawsuits less attractive to file by reducing their ability to bankrupt or distract the target. And it can also allow public officials to take lawful but politically bold actions without fearing an ensuing investigation will destroy their careers. Legal defence rules affect behaviour before any lawsuit is filed. A politician who would not be able to avoid financial ruin from potential lawfare even if they had behaved responsibly may instead seek to extract what corrupt gains they can from office before being ousted. Meanwhile, a politician who anticipates being provided a public-funded lawyer might behave responsibly, depending on the lawyer’s skill in securing their acquittal. The complexity of the voter accountability relationship makes this even more complicated.

Well-designed public funding of legal defence is needed

In a model of lawfare and officeholding, we show that insuring elected officials against lawfare is only effective in certain circumstances. Risks abound: Public-defence arrangements often create the risk of greater risk-taking behaviours and the misuse of taxpayer dollars. An effective legal system for addressing political wrongs attracts lawfare. A world in which prosecution is indiscriminate—when lawfare is rampant and the guilty are charged as often as the innocent—forgoes an important tool for encouraging good behaviour by elected officials. Only a defence system that holds these forces perfectly in balance manages to discourage corruption and malfeasance while deterring lawfare. In other words, institutional design is everything.

That is why Trump’s anti-weaponization fund was so misguided. It called out a real institutional failure but appeared set up merely to justify partisan handouts. A serious anti-lawfare policy would not be administered by loyalists of the president or rely on vague labels like “weaponization” without objective standards. That design cannot deter lawfare and won’t help separate legitimate accountability from partisan abuse, either. The right design affords a lawyer to any accused politician—but allows the justice system to effectively punish the guilty.

A democracy should not make public service depend on who can afford a good lawyer. And despite the rancour over Trump’s “solution” concept, public funding of legal defence is not inherently corrupt. Done well, it can improve democratic accountability. Until we have a well-designed system, American politics will remain vulnerable to lawfare, with the ability to enter and remain in politics dependent on the ability to pay.

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The post Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” was the wrong answer to a real problem first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

But the 1990s also sowed the seeds of the rise of populism and anti-globalism in Western democracies that are now complicating global politics and governance. A new book, Rethinking the 1990s, Liberal World Order-Building in the Aftermath of the Cold War looks back at how important the 1990s were and to the opportunities that were missed at that time by politicians.

In April 2026 the Phelan US Centre spoke with the book’s editors, Professor G. John Ikenberry and Professor Peter Trubowitz. The discussion covered what makes the 1990s such an important decade for the world today, how the US’ liberal bet on China failed, and how US and Western attempts to expand liberal internationalism were met with resentment abroad and at home. We also talked about the lessons the US can take from the decisions made in the 1990s that are still affecting global politics.

Further reading and resources

• Ikenberry, G John, and Peter Trubowitz (eds), Rethinking the 1990s: Liberal World Order-Building in the Aftermath of the Cold War (New York, NY, 2025; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Sept. 2025), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197813133.001.0001
• Text of George F. Kennan’s “Long Telegram” – https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

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• Featured image: “Berlin 1989, Fall der Mauer, Chute du mur” by Thiémard horlogerie, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Note:  This podcast gives the views of the interviewee and host, and is not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, the LSE Phelan US Centre, nor the London School of Economics.

The post Rethinking the 1990s with Professors G. John Ikenberry and Peter Trubowitz | The Ballpark podcast first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

When Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman opposed Nippon Steel’s acquisition of US Steel by saying that “steel is always about security”, he captured a broader shift in US trade politics. From steel and semiconductors to port cranes, trade disputes once argued mainly in terms of jobs or prices are increasingly also presented as questions of national security and geopolitical competition. Who is driving this shift?

This shift is easy to associate with the presidency. Presidents speak to a national audience, are closely linked to foreign policy and national security, and can gain additional authority when trade is cast as a security issue. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, for example, allows the president to restrict imports which are judged to threaten national security. The intuitive story is therefore straightforward: presidents can make trade into a security issue; Congress responds.

Who is really linking trade with security?

In new research we tested that intuition and the evidence points in a different direction. We analysed nearly 70,000 trade-related speeches, press releases, and official statements by US political elites from 2001 to early 2025, covering the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. These include texts from the White House, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, and Congress.

We used a large language model to identify trade-related paragraphs and code whether they link trade to security. We define links with security broadly: explicit national-security references, links between trade and war or peace, and arguments about resilience or economic security. The inclusion of resilience reflects the fact that the current emphasis of trade as a matter of security is often expressed through vulnerable supply chains and dependence rather than through military language alone.

Figure 1 illustrates the pattern that emerges from our data, and it shows several surprising trends. It compares the share of trade-related texts that use a security narrative across those in the executive and congress, and separating Democrats from Republicans.

Figure 1- Use of security language by those in the executive and congress

Members of Congress are driving the security narrative in trade policy

The first surprise is institutional. Members of Congress are more likely than those in the executive-branch to link trade and security. In our models, senators and House members have a 22-percentage-point higher predicted probability of using a national-security narrative than executive actors. This pattern holds across different model specifications and across different types of security narrative.

This finding complicates the usual story about the securitisation of trade. It is tempting to view security language mainly as a presidential tool: presidents invoke security to expand executive discretion. That certainly happens. Yet our evidence shows that Congress is also deeply involved in normalising the security language of trade.

“P20250530DT-0293” by The White House, United States Government Work

Why might members of Congress use security language so often? One possibility is that national-security framing helps elevate local or sectoral concerns into matters of national importance. A lawmaker defending manufacturing jobs or the steel industry can present those interests not only as economic priorities, but also as essential to the country’s strategic position. Security language can make a trade demand sound less like special pleading and more like a national necessity.

Another possibility is that congressional debates often concern concrete trade measures. Security arguments may work especially well when attached to specific sectors or policy instruments. Members of the executive, by contrast, often speak about trade in broader terms.

Partisanship matters more to Congress than to the presidency

Partisanship matters too, but mainly in Congress. As we expected, Republican members of Congress are more likely than Democrats to frame trade in security terms. In our baseline model, the difference is about five percentage points, and the pattern appears in both the House and the Senate. National-security language is especially attractive for Republican legislators because it connects trade policy to topics that are close to their political agenda.

In the executive branch, by contrast, partisan differences are less straightforward. In the baseline model, Democratic and Republican administrations do not differ significantly. In some specifications, especially for resilience and economic-security language during the Trump-Biden period, Democratic administrations even appear more likely to invoke a security frame. Overall, however, evidence for the executive-branch is mixed, suggesting that trends over time and changing policy contexts matter a great deal.

Talking about trade as a security issue can have political payoffs

Our findings also show that “security” does not mean only military threat. Much of the recent language of trade security is about resilience and economic security: whether supply chains are too fragile, whether the United States depends too much on foreign suppliers, and whether domestic production capacity should be treated as strategically important. This helps explain why security framing is not confined to one party or one administration. It has become part of the mainstream vocabulary of US trade politics.

The broader implication is that national-security language is not simply a neutral description of objective threats. It is also a strategic political resource. When trade is framed as a security issue, certain policies become easier to justify and harder to reverse. Tariffs, investment restrictions, export controls, and industrial subsidies can all appear more legitimate when presented as necessary for security. Reversing such policies can also become politically risky if it is portrayed as weakness in the face of geopolitical competition.

This matters for the future of US trade policy. The more trade is debated through the lens of security, the harder it becomes to return to older arguments centred around the benefits of openness. Security framing can entrench policy choices by making them appear politically non-negotiable.

The move to characterise trade as a security issue in US policy is therefore not just a response to geopolitical change, nor is it simply a presidential strategy. It is also shaped by Congress and by partisan incentives. Republicans in Congress use security framing especially often, but the narrative now extends beyond any one party or institution. In Washington today, trade policy has become one more arena in which economic questions are made to speak the language of national security.

• This article is based on the paper, “Who Drives the Security Narrative in US Trade Policy?” in PS: Political Science & Politics.
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• Note: For the sake of clarity, “football” is used throughout this piece to describe “soccer” as opposed to American football, and references to the “World Cup” refer to the men’s tournament.

At a press conference in 2018 in the Iranian capital, Tehran, FIFA (football’s international governing body) president Gianni Infantino stated that “It’s very clear that politics should stay out of football and football should stay out of politics”. Yet, in the years that have followed, many have suggested he has done anything but be true to these words.

There are too many instances of the intersections between football and politics in the run-up to this World Cup to list here, but a key phase began in October 2025 when Infantino was present at an Israel-Gaza peace summit in Egypt, posing for photos with President Donald Trump. Weeks later, Infantino awarded the US president a newly created FIFA Peace Prize, explaining that it was for “a distinguished individual who exemplifies an unwavering commitment to advancing peace and unity throughout the world”. It seemed Infantino was keeping as close to Trump as possible – ignoring his own advice about keeping politics out of sport.

Two months after the award of the peace prize, President Trump began strikes against Iran, setting up the unprecedented situation of a World Cup host nation negotiating an end to war with a participating nation at the time the tournament was underway. Far from politics staying out of sport (and vice versa), it could be argued that the run up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup has been more about politics than sport.

Trump: from football player to football fan

World Cups, much like the modern Olympic Games, are not immune from becoming political and never have been. Indeed, the soft power of hosting such a major event was clear to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini when he oversaw the second World Cup way back in 1934 and – more famously – to Adolf Hitler as he propagandised at the 1936 Olympics. More recently, World Cups in Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022) drew attention from political critics over the host nations’ records on human rights. However, in a world increasingly dominated by 24/7 news and social media, politics has been louder than ever in the run up to this competition and one explanation for this lies squarely with the US president himself, as a widely acknowledged master of gaining press and online attention.

President Trump has a long history of involvement with sports, as an avid golf player and former American football team owner who recently celebrated his 80^th birthday with a UFC showcase on the grounds of the White House. He likes to surround himself with sporting legends – “winners”. When it comes to football, although he played at high school, he could be seen as a more recent convert to fandom. Indeed, over the years he has had a notably rocky relationship with the US women’s football team, especially star player, Megan Rapinoe. Yet, importantly, Trump was in office in 2018 when the US (along with Canada and Mexico) were awarded the 2026 competition, and since then he has paid increasing attention to the game. By late 2025, he even suggested that “soccer” should be known as “football” in the United States, as it is elsewhere – “we need to come up with another name for the NFL stuff”.

Trump’s international politics make their mark

So, what makes this such a political World Cup? Well, let’s start where we began, with Iran. Iran’s team – Trump said – could still play in the US “but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety”. The team have all three group games in the States but are flying to and from Mexico each time they play. And even though Iranians have plenty of other things to worry about now, they wouldn’t be able to travel to the World Cup to support their country even if they wanted to. Iranians are subject to the US administration’s 2025 travel ban, alongside the US’s near neighbour Haiti, who played their first match of the tournament against Scotland in the opening days of the competition. And it’s not just players and fans who are struggling to get in – just days before the tournament began, leading referee Omar Artan of Somalia was refused entry to the US, where he was scheduled to officiate in the coming weeks.

“P20250822DT-0467” by The White House, United States Government Work

Another important element of the 2026 competition is that it is co-hosted by three nations: Canada, Mexico and the US. Trump has had a fractious relationship with both countries in the run up to the 2026 tournament. He had a dismal relationship with former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau (or “Governor” Trudeau) and current PM Mark Carney gave a not so thinly veiled criticism of Trump at Davos this year, when calling on “middle powers” to work together in a world dominated by unreliable “great powers”. Despite the idea that the US might intervene in Mexico to deal with drug cartels, President Claudia Sheinbaum has managed to keep Trump on more cordial terms. However, none of this stopped Trump imposing tariffs on both his near neighbours, which he described as a positive thing for the World Cup: “Tension’s a good thing,” he said, “I think it makes it much more exciting”.

Costs and controversies at home

Where concerns about war, tariffs and entry visas have certainly hit the headlines beyond the United States, so too have the concerns voiced within the United States about the tournament. Firstly, there is the issue of a suggested role for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement force (ICE) at games, with some cities – particularly those with large minority populations – bridling at the prospect. Secondly, there has been much discussion of the cost of the competition, and its impact on the host cities.

Some fear that the presence of ICE officers in host cities could create a climate of fear among certain minority groups, which might even stop them assembling or attending games – for example, the Haitian community in Massachusetts or the substantial Hispanic community nationwide. Indeed, Democratic member of Congress Nellie Pou of New Jersey went so far as to introduce a “Save the World Cup” bill to Congress that sought to stop ICE conducting raids within a mile of tournament events. Secretary for Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, however, has stressed that ICE agents would primarily be deployed to stop counterfeiting, drugs and human trafficking, rather than to seek out undocumented migrants.

Others have complained about the cost of the tournament. The unusually “dynamic” ticket pricing and resale system has led the Attorneys General of New York and New Jersey to subpoena FIFA over allegations of inflated prices and misleading those buying tickets. Meanwhile, New Jersey’s governor has been hugely critical of the lack of FIFA support for matchday travel, which led to a significant price hike for those using public transport to get to games. Although some concessions were made, travel – which was free on public transport in the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, in Russia and Qatar, respectively – is still far more expensive for World Cup fans than anticipated.

Will Trump turn the World Cup into a political football?

Given the sheer volume of press attention that has followed these varied controversies, before the tournament began some feared that the football itself might be overshadowed. However, as the group stages have started, slowly attention appears to have turned to the results: from the opening victory of the tournament for co-hosts Mexico, to the remarkable draw between Spain and Cape Verde.

That said, Donald Trump is unlikely to be absent from the tournament spotlight for long, and it is too soon to tell whether the feared migration raids might come to pass. Many outlets have already reported that Trump could well hand the trophy to the eventual victors on 19 July, echoing his controversial appearance alongside Infantino during the victory celebrations of Chelsea FC at the World Club Cup final in New Jersey last year. Whatever the fate of the US team in the competition, one can be assured that President Trump will see the tournament, for all its controversies, as the greatest and most successful World Cup ever.

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The post The 2026 FIFA World Cup has become another arena for Trump’s political theatre first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

On May 22, 2026, Kevin Warsh began his tenure as Chairman of the US Federal Reserve (the “Fed”). A Trump appointee, the new Chair has pledged to bring about institutional change at the Fed. As a candidate for the powerful position, he also made an economic case for interest rate cuts. Mr Warsh did emphasize that those decisions would be made independent of any political motivation or interference.

The institutional design of the Fed, which gives it independence from Congress and the President, insulates it from the electoral cycle and associated political desires. As the state of the economy affects the popularity of incumbent governments, politicians can be tempted to influence monetary policy decisions. But while lower interest rates boost the economy in the short run, which can be helpful for political leaders, they also risk increasing inflation over the long term.

How have presidents tried to influence the Fed in the past?

Despite these institutional safeguards, past US Presidents have attempted to affect the Fed’s decisions to their advantage. In notable cases, Presidents exerted this political pressure by personally meeting with the Fed Chair and other senior Fed officials. A systematic analysis of archival records reveals how often past US Presidents had personal interactions with officials from the Fed (see Figure 1). The variation is striking: Bill Clinton had six personal interactions with Fed officials, while Richard Nixon had 160 during his presidency.

Figure 1 – Yearly number of interactions between the President and the Fed

Some of the meetings between Presidents and Fed Officials might not reflect political pressure but have occurred for other reasons. For example, if the economy is in a recession, the President might ask the Fed for its assessment. However, historical accounts are quite clear that both President Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson used personal meetings with Fed officials to demand easier monetary policy.

In the infamous Nixon tapes, we can hear the President yell at Fed Chair Arthur Burns on several occasions, telling him to ease monetary policy. In one recording, Nixon tells his economic advisor George Shultz about Burns that “War is going to be declared if he doesn’t come around some.” Burns noted in his personal diary, released to the public decades later, that “I am convinced that the President will do anything to be reelected.”

Lyndon B. Johnson is also known as a notorious bully towards the Fed. According to several accounts, he invited Fed Chair William McChesney Martin to his ranch in Texas and physically attacked him, pushing him against the wall, in a disagreement about the right course of monetary policy. “You’ve got me in a position where you can run a rapier into me and you’ve done it”, Johnson reportedly shouted at Martin.

Pressure on the Fed can drive inflation

In a statistical analysis, it is possible to combine the data shown in Figure 1, the narrative about Nixon and Johnson’s behavior, and macroeconomic data. This combination can then be used to assess the economic effects of increased presidential pressure on the Fed. These episodes of pressure turn out to be a driver of inflation, but do not lead to an increase in real economic activity. A six-month period that corresponds to only half of the intensity of political pressure during the Nixon era is estimated to imply an increase in the US price level of seven percent over the subsequent decade.

“P20260522DT-1159” by The White House, United States Government Work

Not only because of these quantitative results have episodes like the Nixon-Burns clash become leading examples for political pressure on central banks. They have contributed to institutional memory at the Federal Reserve, with subsequent Fed Chairs resisting political interference. Most notably, the previous Fed Chair Jerome Powell firmly pushed back on President Trump’s attacks.

It is reasonable to assume that Kevin Warsh, as a former Fed official and decades-long financial market participant, is well aware of the potential dangers of political interference with monetary policy decisions. Indeed, Mr Warsh was careful in framing his views that rates should be lower with an apolitical rationale. For example, he referenced the ongoing Artificial Intelligence boom and related productivity developments as structural reasons that rates can fall.

Did Mr Warsh’s arguments reflect a long-held conviction, or did they conveniently align his views with the administration’s preferences? It is only fair to give him the benefit of the doubt, although Warsh’s calls for interest rate cuts certainly did not hurt his candidacy for Fed Chair.

Kevin Warsh now has a difficult economic and political landscape to navigate

Now that the new Fed Chair assumed office, what is more important is that US inflation is again on an upward trajectory. The consumer price index, as released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early June 2026, rose by 4.2 percent over the last 12 months, well above the Fed’s target.

Inflationary pressures, in part coming from the oil price surge triggered from the war in Iran, make Chair Warsh’s economic case for rate cuts much weaker. The first policy decision with Warsh as Chair was to not change interest rates on June 17, 2026. Financial market participants do not expect any rate cuts soon, with some predicting interest rate hikes later in the year. Not least because monetary policy decisions are made by a committee, it is conceivable that the Warsh Fed will raise rates at some point this year.

President Trump will not be excited about these prospects. Even though Trump has praised Warsh as his “central casting” pick, it would not be surprising to see the clash between the White House and the Fed continue. The lesson from history is that giving in to political pressure is perilous. As much as it was for Jerome Powell, the challenge for Kevin Warsh will be to navigate a difficult political landscape, while making independent interest rate decisions that promote price stability and economic prosperity.

• This article is based on the paper, “Political Pressure on the Fed”, in The Review of Economic Studies.
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

The post Why the Federal Reserve will remain in the political crosshairs first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

• This article is part of our ‘The 2026 Midterms‘ series curated by Peter Finn (University of Greenwich). The series explores the run-up to the 2026 US midterm elections at the state and national levels. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (P.D.Finn@greenwich.ac.uk).

Texas just ran the most expensive, highest-turnout primary in its history — nearly 4.5 million ballots cast across both parties – more than any midterm or general primary the state has ever held. That number alone tells you something: the Lone Star State is not sleepwalking into November. Here’s how the primaries reframed the midterms, and what to watch in the fall.

The results that mattered

Let’s start at the top of the ticket. The Republican Senate primary was the most expensive in American history — north of $110 million in ad spending — and it still didn’t produce a winner in March. Incumbent Senator John Cornyn edged State Attorney General Ken Paxton 41.9 to 40.9 percent, with Congressman Wesley Hunt playing spoiler at 13.4. Senate Republicans spent something like $77 million to buy themselves a runoff which was held in late May, then watched Paxton win it anyway. That’s the single most consequential result in the state. A 25-year incumbent got rejected by nearly 60 percent of his own primary electorate, and the establishment wing — the Bush-era, business-conservative Texas GOP — is now officially an endangered species. Cornyn’s breed is gone. The Republican base wanted the fighter, scandals and all.

The down-ballot carnage told the same story. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw got wiped out 56-41 by Steve Toth, a conservative challenger from the Texas House. Sid Miller, a sitting statewide official who had run afoul of Republican leadership, lost the race for Agriculture Commissioner to newcomer Nate Sheets. Texas House moderates like Stan Kitzman and Cecil Bell — both with Trump endorsements, both spending over a million dollars — lost anyway. The Texas House is moving to the right. The throughline: in Republican primaries, fealty (especially to Trump) beats experience, and culture-war energy beats a legislative record.

On the Democratic side, James Talarico beat Jasmine Crockett for the Senate nod. He had a three-month head start and a real hard-money edge over a candidate who got in late and leaned too hard on digital. Fundamentals still matter. Hard feelings linger between the camps, creating the need for unity in November.

But one significant result Democrats care about showed up in the turnout columns. At 2.3 million, Democratic primary turnout hit its highest mark in three cycles, and it ran even higher in the state’s 64 Latino-majority counties — up four points over the 2022 midterm and more than a point over 2024, a presidential year.

Where Texas fits nationally

This is the part people outside Texas keep missing. The math is brutal. Republicans currently hold the US Senate 53-47. Democrats have credible shots at Maine, Michigan, and North Carolina — that gets them to 50. Texas is the seat that turns 50 into a majority and Trump’s last two years into a graveyard for his agenda. Texas isn’t a vanity target anymore. It’s the tipping point.

But even if Paxton holds the seat once held by Sam Houston, Lyndon Johnson and John Tower, he’ll make Republicans hurt to do it. Cornyn and his allies have already burned close to $100 million in the primary. If the general runs the same way, Texas becomes a money pit — and every dollar national Republicans spend defending Paxton is a dollar they can’t spend in competitive races like Georgia, Maine, or Iowa.

The fundamentals back it up. Texas ran about 12 points right of the nation in 2024. If the national environment is something like D+8 — and the polling points that direction — the Texas baseline could be R+4 or lower. Talarico probably can’t overcome R+4. He can absolutely sneak through at R+2. The unknown that makes the whole thing live is the penalty for Paxton’s personal baggage, including impeachment by the Texas House in 2023.

Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash

What to watch in November

The Senate race is the marquee, and it’s a real test. Talarico is running anti-system, progressive populism with biblical fluency — not warmed-over moderation. Only 44 percent of Cornyn’s runoff voters say they’ll back Paxton, with 30 percent defecting straight to Talarico. The catch is money and definition. Paxton is fully known and broke; Talarico is well-funded and undefined, with a stack of 2020-era clips (“God is nonbinary,” among others) the GOP will run on a loop. Whoever defines Talarico first – and gets it to stick – wins the race.

Below the US Senate race on the ballot, watch:

• Governor. Democrat Gina Hinojosa won’t be confused for a frontrunner against Abbott, but she’s posting enormous leads with moderates and independents. If the top of the ticket moves, she moves with it.

• Attorney General. Mayes Middleton vs. Nathan Johnson for an office Democrats haven’t won since 1994. This is the down-ballot canary and a test of the ultra-conservative politics of the Republicans message from Middleton who has stoked cultural and religious issues in his race.

• South Texas. Redistricting cuts both ways here. Cuellar (TX-28) leans Democratic, Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34) is a toss-up, and Monica De La Cruz draws Tejano star Bobby Pulido. The wrinkle: because every South Texas district is now competitive, Democrats are firing up general-election turnout machines in Webb, Hidalgo, and Cameron — counties whose primary turnout already runs above the state average. This is the bottom of the ballot pulling the top.

The bottom line: the primaries didn’t turn Texas blue. They turned it interesting. Redder at the grassroots, more expensive than it’s ever been, and — for the first time in a long while — genuinely in play at the top. So, will Texas turn blue in November? The short answer: still a long shot this year, but the foundation is cracking in ways that should worry Republicans.

The most likely outcome: Texas stays red — but closer

Bet on the baseline and you’ll usually be right. Texas hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since 1976, hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, and hasn’t put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion since 1990. Republicans have owned every statewide office for a quarter century. That kind of structural advantage doesn’t evaporate in one cycle, even a good cycle for Democrats.

The numbers say the same. With a strong Democratic national environment, James Talarico can probably get to 45 percent. Getting past 48 percent is a different story. Ken Paxton is a genuinely weak nominee, with net favorability worse than Ted Cruz’s was in 2018, but Cruz still beat Beto O’Rourke by driving raw Republican turnout, and there are simply more Republicans than Democrats in this state. The most likely November result is a single-digit GOP win at the top — tighter than 2024, close enough to scare people, but still a win.

The least likely outcome: a clean Democratic sweep

Democrats flipping the Senate seat and the governorship and down-ballot offices in the same night would be the upset of the decade. The Texas House tells you why: Democrats need 14 net flips for a majority, and the better models put that around one-in-three at best. But 3-5 seats is a real possibility, and in a chamber this close, every seat is leverage.

The Senate’s even safer for Republicans. A true blue wave requires everything breaking right at once — Paxton’s scandals cratering him, Latino turnout holding at primary levels, suburban defections accelerating, and Talarico’s 2020-era clips never landing. Possible but not probable.

What would actually flip Texas?

The real story isn’t 2026, it’s the trajectory — and three things make this cycle structurally different from past Democratic mirages.

First, the Latino reset. Democratic primary turnout in Latino-majority counties ran above both 2022 and 2024. In TX-34, twice as many people voted in the Democratic primary as in the Republican one. If the Rio Grande Valley’s rightward lurch was a “Trump effect” rather than a permanent realignment, November is the first real test with him off the ballot. Second, the suburbs. College-educated voters around Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio keep drifting from hardline Republicans, and the GOP just nominated its most hardline statewide candidate in years. Third, the sheer churn. Five of the ten fastest-growing US cities since 2020 are in Texas. These exurban transplants don’t carry old Texas’s political DNA, and nobody knows how they vote yet.

It’s too early to tell if Texas will flip in 2026. The likeliest result is a closer-than-comfortable red state. But “competitive” is itself the change — the question is no longer whether Texas is safely Republican, but how long the math holds.

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The post The 2026 Midterms: Texas’ primaries show the cracks in the state’s red foundation first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

In the US, each level of government – federal, state, and local – has its own law enforcement. Local government can be at the county or municipal level, with municipal government often led by a mayor and a political council, commission, or assembly. At this level, the primary law enforcement administrator is the police chief who is accountable to an elected official(s) or city manager, who, in turn, represents the political will of locals. Mayors are elected officials who act as political figures with partisan values, specific policy preferences, and agendas.

In our research, we look at how the race and gender of police chiefs and the racial, gender, and political affiliations of their mayors influence responsiveness. We examine which factors help explain how police chiefs respond to events, and the influence of their race and gender, as well as the race, gender, and politics of elected officials.

Whiteness, masculinity, demographics, and political control

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests in spring and summer 2020, social media has become a tool used by government officials and agencies to communicate with, support, and criticize other officials and organizations within a democratic society. To investigate the responsiveness of police chiefs, we analyzed their initial social media responses during the first week following the US Capitol attack in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, 2021. The Capitol attack was a democratic crisis that was driven by whiteness and masculinity. We explore this context using the concepts of representative bureaucracy and political control of the bureaucracy.

Representative bureaucracy is the idea that hiring individuals in public service who share social backgrounds with the populations they serve can benefit people of color and women. This is rooted in the belief that people with similar backgrounds share experiences and values, leading to better treatment of historically underserved and underrepresented groups, as bureaucrats use their discretion to act in ways that reflect their values as well as those of the population. We suggest that the representation of whiteness and masculinity among police chiefs will lead them to be less responsive, and this will be the case when the white population is larger.

Political control of the bureaucracy theory explains how politicians use their power to pressure appointed officials or street-level bureaucrats, thereby changing their behavior. We look at mayors’ political affiliation and the intersection of race and gender on the responsiveness of their respective police chief within a city/municipality.

How did police chiefs respond to January 6^th?

We examine the racial majority and dominant gender to understand the role of whiteness and masculinity in responding through social media to a democratic crisis that exemplifies these demographic characteristics. Responsiveness in this context means that police chiefs speak out against whiteness and masculinity, whereas non-responsiveness is a representation of white masculine values. Social media responses can signal to citizens the priorities and values of police chiefs in crises such as these.

Data from social media accounts of police chiefs in local jurisdictions with at least 200,000 residents show that white male police chiefs and those serving higher percentages of white populations were less responsive following January 6^th. This highlights the prominence of whiteness and masculinity among bureaucratic leaders when responding to a democratic crisis driven by white masculinity. We also find that mayors’ partisanship influences responsiveness—police chiefs under Republican mayors are less responsive. Additionally, our analysis indicates that white male police chiefs tend to be more responsive in areas with larger white populations due to the presence of minoritized mayors.

Photo by R.D. Smith on Unsplash

The effect of representative bureaucracy and political control on responsiveness

In our analysis about the role of identity, we find that compared to minoritized police chiefs, white male police chiefs were less responsive on social media to January 6^th as were police chiefs who served communities with higher white populations. Our data also show that white male police chiefs with a larger white population are more responsive in jurisdictions with minoritized mayors. 

Bringing in the role of mayors’ partisanship in the context of their racial and gender identity, we find that police chiefs with a Republican mayor are less responsive than those with a non-Republican mayor. Although our data indicate that police chiefs with white male mayors are not less responsive than those with minoritized mayors, we do find that white male police chiefs with higher white populations are more responsive in jurisdictions with minoritized mayors. Political control has some role to play in determining police chiefs’ responsiveness.

Figure 1 – Determinants of police chiefs’ responsiveness

Why police chiefs’ race and gender matter for representation

The January 6^th attack on the Capitol gives us a unique context for analyzing the effects of political control on bureaucratic actions and our findings help deepen understanding of equity and diversity in the public sector by illustrating the complex relationship between bureaucratic and political representation concerning race, gender, and partisanship.

Our findings have important implications for the theory and practice of public administration. First, white male police chiefs are less responsive than their minoritized counterparts, indicating that the representational abilities of minoritized bureaucrats also include the racial majority and dominant gender. Second, if white male police chiefs uphold existing power structures, then the representation of the white male majority may prevent the goals of representative bureaucracy from achieving democratic values related to equity and fairness for minoritized groups. Third, a mayor’s political affiliation influences the responsiveness of bureaucratic leadership, significantly impacting the democratic process during disruptions in the transfer of power. Fourth, the presence of mayors can pressure bureaucrats beneath them to act in certain ways, demonstrating how politicians exert control over the bureaucracy. Finally, police chiefs who frequently interact with their minoritized mayors may create a contagion effect that leads white male police chiefs to not support the values or traditions of the racial majority.

• This article is based on the paper, “Protecting the Citadel of Democracy: A Political and Administrative Response”, in Public Administration Review.
• Please read our comments policy before commenting.
• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

The post Why the identity of top law enforcement and the mayors they work with matters for responsiveness during democratic crises first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

In mid-May 2026, Donald Trump landed in Beijing for the first visit to China by a US president since 2017, a summit that Chinese state media hailed as “historic.” It was influence at its most visible: two leaders, a banquet in the Great Hall of the People, and a walk through the Temple of Heaven. But leader-to-leader diplomacy is only one way a country tries to shape another. A quieter channel runs directly to ordinary citizens; on that front, the United States has been retreating. Only a few months earlier, the State Department had carried out what officials called the largest overhaul of the department in decades, including gutting the very bureaus devoted to public diplomacy and democracy promotion, after the dismantling of USAID.

The episode reflects an argument the United States is having with itself: whether it should project democratic values to foreign publics at all. Answering that requires knowing whether, and how, pro-democracy messaging works. This is a question with surprisingly little evidence behind it, especially in authoritarian countries where the stakes are particularly high. In new research I set out to test it in a hard case: the world’s most powerful democracy trying to win over the public of the world’s most powerful authoritarian state.

A rare open window in a closed system

The US Embassy in China runs the most-followed foreign embassy account on Weibo, China’s X-like platform, with roughly 3.5 million followers. Unlike most diplomatic missions, which stick to “safe” topics such as tourism and culture, the US embassy regularly posts about American political institutions and democratic values: elections, media freedom, asset-disclosure requirements, the funding of political parties, and the right to criticise the president. The posts rarely name China, but the contrast with the latter’s political system is unmistakable. By avoiding explicit comparisons, however, these posts mostly slip beneath the eye of Chinese censors.

Two experiments, two very different moments

To see whether this messaging changes minds, I ran two near-identical online survey experiments with a combined sample of about 3,600 Chinese internet users, who are the natural audience for the embassy’s posts. Participants were randomly assigned either to read one of five genuine articles from the embassy or to a control group that read nothing.

The timing was the key variable. The first experiment ran in November 2018, a relatively calm period in US-China relations. The second ran in January 2021, just after a year of botched US pandemic responses and just after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, when America’s global image was battered and US-China ties had soured over both the pandemic and an intensifying trade war.

The headline finding: worse times, better results

My main result was unexpected. As Figure 1 shows, in November 2018, the embassy’s pro-democracy articles did nothing to improve Chinese readers’ views of the United States; if anything, the effects leaned slightly to the negative.

Figure 1 – Estimated effects of each article on attitudes toward the US, democracy, and moving abroad in 2018

Source: Huang (2026), Perspectives on Politics, reproduced under CC BY 4.0.

In January 2021, the very same articles measurably improved views of the United States, as the pooled result in the “U.S.” column of Figure 2 shows.

Figure 2 – Estimated effects of the same articles in 2021

Note: For the “U.S.” outcome, several articles (and the pooled treatment) produce statistically significant positive effects, in contrast to 2018. Source: Huang (2026), Perspectives on Politics, reproduced under CC BY 4.0.

Why would identical messaging work better in worse times? The clue is in the starting point. Between the two studies, average favourability toward the US among control-group respondents fell by about 37 percent. This decline mirrors other independent polling of Chinese opinion over the same period, with the 2018 baseline closely matching Pew’s last available favourability reading for China. Meanwhile, regard for China rose further, from an already high level.

“P20260514DT-2803” by The White House, United States Government Work

With opinion of the US sitting at a beaten-down baseline, saturated with negative headlines, it had greater room to move; a calm, factual account of how American democracy works therefore supplied something the prevailing narrative lacked. In 2018, when views were neutral and balanced to begin with, the same information had little to push against.

Pooling both studies (Figure 3) confirms the pattern. Across nearly every article, the embassy’s messaging shifted views of the US significantly more in 2021 than in 2018. The effect size was modest but in line with what persuasion research finds when persuasion happens at all.

Figure 3 – Differences in each article’s effect on attitudes toward the US, 2021 minus 2018

Source: Huang (2026), Perspectives on Politics, reproduced under CC BY 4.0.

I describe this as the difference between public diplomacy as a “shield” and as a “sword.” It seems to work less as a tool for proactively winning converts in normal times and more to defend a country’s residual credibility when its reputation is under attack.

The sound of silence

The shield, though, covers only so much. Look again at the first two figures: outside the “U.S.” column, the “Democracy” and “Move Abroad” estimates hover at zero in both years. On every other outcome I measured, the messaging produced what I call a “sound of silence”. It did not shift readers’ general attitudes toward democracy, did not make them more critical of China or its government, and did not raise their willingness to move abroad or express dissent. This lack of effect held across age, education, prior knowledge of the US, and pro-Western leanings. In particular, it held among the young, who are usually considered the prime target of American outreach. A further detail sharpens the point. It made no difference whether an article was attributed to the US Embassy or a post from an anonymous, Chinese-sounding source; the messenger’s identity was not the obstacle. The difficulty lies in moving the views of a proud, rising nation, not in distrust of Washington.

What it means for Beijing and Washington

For Beijing, the finding cuts both ways. Chinese officials routinely blame domestic discontent on “foreign forces.” My results suggest that even the most visible foreign force in the country has little power to manufacture political demands; grievances, where they exist, are homegrown.

For Washington, the lessons are sobering but useful. Democracy promotion through messaging is unlikely to convert publics in a confident, fast-growing non-democracy; “preaching at foreigners,” as political scientist Joseph Nye once warned, rarely works. But keeping the capacity to respond when your image is under threat does appear to pay off. That argues for a shift in emphasis from values to performance, and from lecturing foreign publics about elections toward showing what democratic governance actually delivers.

This comes with a caveat that current events make impossible to ignore. The shield function rests on two assumptions: that the United States still has a credible democratic system worth defending, and the means to do the defending. The widely perceived democratic backsliding of the US, along with the significant retrenchment of its engagement abroad, puts both in question. Whether democratic messaging can still play even its defensive role under these conditions is now an urgent research question.

• This article is based on the paper “The Sound of Silence: Championing Democracy in an Authoritarian Society” in Perspectives on Politics.
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

The post American pro-democracy messaging in China works as a shield, not a sword first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.

In October 2025, the Trump administration tore down the East Wing of the White House, which had stood for more than 80 years. In its place, the administration intends to construct a large ballroom as an events venue. Following the demolition, the Trump administration was sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation who argued that the President could not destroy parts of the White House without some form of review or public consultation. At the end of March 2026, Judge Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in the case, quashing the proposed ballroom, writing:

I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have… The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!”

Trump and the symbolism of the White House

Donald Trump is clearly obsessed with building his big ballroom. And throughout this saga, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the gilded faux imperial palace he is creating is a metaphor for Trump himself: obscenely expensive and purposed exclusively for the rich and privileged. At the same time, Trump’s pet project has been ruled to be illegal, having been done without the approval of either Congress or the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The White House first opened in 1800 and was designed by James Hoban in the neoclassical style. This style was the physical embodiment of the aspiration of a return to Athenian democracy, tempered with the rule of law and the idea that “all men are created equal.” The White House was not imagined to be an imperial edifice like Buckingham Palace, the Russian Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, or the Palace of Versailles. Trump’s changes to the White House are the antithesis of the ideal of American Republican virtue: frugality, simplicity and restraint. What is now both symbolic and at the same time, ironic, was that those who were enslaved hewed and hauled the sandstone blocks for the exterior walls, and immigrants built the structure and fitted the carpentry for the interior. 

Trump’s authoritarian attempts to override Congressional authorization and defy court orders are just one more reminder of his overriding ambitions to rule as king, and to return the United States of America to a monarchy.  However, as eight million Americans demonstrated on March 28 thousands of No Kings protests across the country, many Americans will always demand to be equal citizens in a democratic republic, and never the subjects of a corrupt king.  

Trump’s alterations of the White House upend its entire architectural philosophy, and the current president is doing something more significant than just stamping his image on the building. His changes to the White House show how Trump fails to understand the presidential residence which has been entrusted to him for a limited time by the electorate, under the Constitution. The White House, if it’s anything at all, is a powerful symbol of that office, and symbols are significant. It’s a metaphor for how Trump has reinterpreted the presidency and law across his terms.

“P20260519JB-0601” by The White House, United States Government Work

Trump has reinterpreted the White House from within

Following his second inauguration, Trump began making changes to the Oval Office – one of the most famous rooms in the modern world. The Oval Office now has more regimental flags behind the desk, more busts placed on the furniture and more gold, including the gold filigree added to the fireplace screen behind where Trump sits as he holds court with reporters and foreign dignitaries.

In addition to the new Oval Office clutter and gilded stick-ons, in September 2025 Trump added what he refers to as a “presidential walk of fame” to the building’s West Colonnade. It is made up of images of past presidents along with a blurb about each cast on a bronze plaque. The most famous image is one of an autopen device in the place of Trump’s presidential predecessor, Joe Biden. The blurb reads: “by far, the worst President in American History” and repeats claims regarding Biden’s “mental decline.”

The entry for former president Barack Obama reads: “one of the most divisive political figures in American History,” and the repeats allegations of “spying” on the Trump 2016 campaign. The one memorializing former president George W. Bush states that Bush deserves credit for establishing the Department of Homeland Security but criticizes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stating they “should not have happened.”

Trump creates his own historical memory

Here we can see the significance of these alterations to the White House. The presidential walk of fame (perhaps named by Trump to mimic the Hollywood Walk of Fame) carries a more sinister meaning: a warning about Trump’s instinctive desire to transform what has been a federalist democracy under a Constitution and the rule of law into a totalitarian state. 

“Totalitarian” is not hyperbole. The implications of a totalitarian regime include not just a curtailment of individual liberties under the rule of an all-powerful leader, it insists on total obedience, and a lack of tolerance for dissent. Totalitarian states, like the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, or Nazi Germany demand that everyone bend to the Party Line, whatever that may be. So, under Trump’s version of totalitarianism, we can’t have just a gallery of former presidents. Instead, such a manifestation must also subscribe to Trump’s version of history. As with Stalin’s enemies, Biden has been purged from historical memory in lieu of an autopen. Obama was incompetent and divisive and “spied” on Trump. Bush got the US into the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq.

And this is now “official” history, cast in bronze, enthroned in the White House and declared to be true by the president himself.

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. 

The post Trump’s White House alterations show how he is remaking the presidency on his terms first appeared on LSE United States Politics and Policy.