Trump Is Betting That a Government Overhaul Is Good Politics

President Trump knows how to pick his political targets.

He has run his Republican enemies out of his party. He has spurred a swift corporate reversal on D.E.I. And he has so profoundly reshaped the nation’s immigration debate that dozens of Democrats supported the Laken Riley Act, a bill making it easier to deport unauthorized migrants accused of certain crimes, which he signed into law this afternoon.

Next up: the government itself.

In offering buyouts to roughly two million federal workers, trying and failing this week to freeze federal grants and loans, and openly challenging Congress’s role as an equal governing partner by ignoring laws it has passed, Trump has made a show of taking on the bureaucracy he runs. It’s generated unified pushback from Democrats, but the president believes he has public sentiment on his side.

He’s betting that Americans won’t care that he’s upending institutions most have lost faith in — and that, despite a rocky rollout of the funding freeze, they’ll reward him for seemingly trying to do something to change them.

Giving voters what they asked for

Trump has plenty of evidence on his side. Voters across the political spectrum are disillusioned with a government that has become synonymous with “Groundhog Day”-esque spending battles, slow public works projects and political gridlock.

In 2022, a New York Times poll found that a majority of American voters believed the system of government did not work — a deep sense of dissatisfaction that Trump has used to his advantage. This month, polling from The Times found that 59 percent of adults, including 57 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans, believed the nation’s political system had been broken for decades.

And by last year, public trust in government overall was near historic lows, according to the Pew Research Center.