Two Washingtons: A French Correspondent's Logbook of Trump's Second Term
ARTE.tv Documentary
Marine, a journalist accredited at the White House as a US correspondent for French television, lives with one foot in each of two worlds. By day there is the center of Trumpist power. At home there is Mount Pleasant, a Washington neighborhood of Democrats in a city that, as Marine notes, voted 92.5% for Kamala Harris. The neighbors are civil servants, public administration employees, and immigrants from Latin America. Marine calls it a progressive microcosm that would quickly find itself targeted by the new administration. The documentary is built around that double vantage point: watching the people who make decisions and the people who live with the consequences. Its central question is how a country absorbs a sustained campaign against its institutions, its language, and some of its residents, and why so little resistance seems to follow.
Day One: Revenge as Spectacle
The film opens on inauguration day. The narration says that within an hour the president signs more executive orders than his predecessor did in half a term. The first is a freeze on all federal hiring. Another withdraws the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Marine describes the event as a former reality TV star turning the inauguration into something like a wrestling halftime show: nine hours of spectacle in which "the enemies of the people" are ritually named. These are civil servants, environmental defenders, the media, sexual minorities, and immigrants.
The consequences arrive quickly. According to the narration, within 48 hours of Trump's return, immigration police arrest 538 people in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Seattle.
Mount Pleasant Under Pressure
Mount Pleasant is a Latino neighborhood as well as a neighborhood of white Democratic civil servants. Residents soon set up Signal groups to share information. The film changes the names of people and groups to protect them. Marine gets an alert that ICE has carried out a raid at the end of the street, at the hairdresser Marine uses. Marine's children attend a bilingual English–Spanish public school three blocks away. Marine asks the neighborhood moms' chat whether ICE can enter the school, and the answer is yes. The narration explains that schools, hospitals, places of worship, and courtrooms are no longer sanctuary places, and immigration police can now go anywhere.
The neighborhood's civil servants are hit at the same time. Marine reports that someone has lost a job in one house out of three. Tens of thousands of federal employees are fired and accused of wasting public money. They are escorted out by security guards and given no more than 15 minutes to collect their belongings before being put outside in front of cameras. Marine concludes that under this administration cruelty is "not an accident, but an end in itself." At a small gathering of affected workers, one woman explains that her health insurance and her partner's are tied to their jobs, so she does not know what will happen. Another says they dedicated their lives to service and calls the treatment disgusting.
Donna and Don, Witnesses
At that gathering Marine notices a woman with "something of a Jane Fonda vibe" and photographs her. A few weeks later Marine sees her again at the federal courthouse, at a hearing in the Associated Press case. The Trump administration had cut off the AP's access to White House events as punishment for continuing to call the Gulf of Mexico by that name rather than "Gulf of America," as the president had renamed it. The narration calls the press the president's second favorite target.
The woman turns out to be Donna. She and her husband Don are retirees from Austin, Texas, who gave up a quiet retirement to move to Washington, attend every protest, and sit in on hearings. Donna says they are very scared and did not expect so much to happen so quickly through executive orders. They came, she says, so that as American citizens they could "bear witness" to what is happening in their country. The couple become a recurring thread in the documentary.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Brian Glenn, and "New Media"
Marine films a congressional investigative hearing where the heads of NPR and PBS are questioned before a committee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene. The narration describes the Georgia Republican as known for an explosive temperament, sometimes conspiratorial views, and devotion to Trump. Greene accuses public broadcasting of pushing trans proselytism on children. She cites a drag queen appearing on a show aimed at children aged 3 to 8 and calls PBS "one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry." The narration points out that the program the photo came from was never broadcast on PBS.
Marine notices that Greene's partner, Brian Glenn, is sitting nearby. The narration calls him the president's favorite journalist. He has followed Trump since 2016 at rallies, trials, and trips abroad. Days earlier he was in the Oval Office asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy why he did not wear a suit. Marine decides these are the people to approach to understand the MAGA world's "obsession with retribution." The first attempt goes badly. At an impromptu press conference after the hearing, Greene responds to a foreign journalist's question by asking what country they are from. She says she doesn't "give a crap" about their reporting and tells them to go back to a country "with a major migrant problem."
Marine later meets Glenn at the White House. He says his outlet, Real America's Voice, reaches "millions, tens of millions every day." He describes its core audience as people who put the MAGA agenda first, "the Christian kind of a nationalist, a populist." The channel's lineup includes Steve Bannon's War Room and the Charlie Kirk Show. Glenn says he believes he was the first new-media outlet ever to travel on Air Force One. The narration explains that "new media" is the label for the newly credentialed pro-Trump outlets.
Erasing Words and Symbols
The narration says the MAGA world has its own newspeak, in which some words appear and others are banned. Marine reports that 8,000 pages on public administration websites containing words such as "woman," "gender," "equality," "slavery," and "Black" are deleted.
At the foot of 16th Street, next to the square bordering the White House, the yellow "Black Lives Matter" lettering is torn out of the asphalt with jackhammers by order of the president. It disappears within hours, and with it, in Marine's words, the assertion of racial equality made in the 2020 protests against police violence. One person collects a fragment, calling it "a beautiful part of history that we're taking away." Marine is struck by the lack of demonstrations in a city that is more than 40% Black. Only one woman stands there with a banner, crying.
She is Nadine. She camped on the square in 2020 after George Floyd's killing. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago and became a US citizen almost exactly 30 years earlier. She says she spent four months trying to warn people about Project 2025 and does not understand why no one took it seriously. She says she "bought into" American exceptionalism and checks and balances, and after 37 years in the country now considers it "a farce." She announces she is going back to Trinidad and Tobago because, she says, it is not fascist.
Classicism as Policy: Justin Shubow
The president has large plans for the capital's architecture. The key figure is Justin Shubow, his architecture adviser. The narration says that as head of the Commission of Fine Arts during Trump's first term, Shubow wrote executive orders imposing classical style on public building construction, under the banner "Make federal architecture beautiful again." He quotes Thomas Jefferson describing the Capitol as the first temple to the sovereignty of the people, built in Athenian taste.
Marine asks whether beauty is subjective. Shubow says no. He argues there is widespread public agreement about which buildings are beautiful and which are ugly, backed by surveys. Before neo-Greek or neo-Roman buildings can go up, the capital's brutalist buildings are slated to disappear: the FBI's Hoover Building, the Department of Energy's Forrestal Building, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters designed by Marcel Breuer, which is a listed building. The narration says Shubow sees brutalism as a legacy of the socialist aesthetic of Kennedy-era America. Shubow says that whatever one's criticisms of Trump, "he does have his finger on the pulse of ordinary Americans." Marine calls this the knockout argument of Washington's new masters: Trump is on the side of the people, and the people are never wrong. Marine describes the city as a "new Rome for a Caesar of a new kind."
Troops in the Streets and a Burning Flag
Marine goes to every demonstration looking for resistance and keeps running into Donna and Don. Marine observes that the protesters are almost always the same: kind, white, liberal boomers. They belong, the narration notes, to the half of Americans over 60 who receive a pension and can afford to spend their days protesting.
In midsummer, the president uses an assault on a young DOGE recruit as a pretext to declare a state of emergency and deploy the National Guard in the capital. He says, "We're starting very strongly with DC, and we're going to clean it up real quick." The narration notes that armed soldiers in the streets are unprecedented in Washington and that a law dating from 1878 prohibits the military from carrying out law enforcement on national territory. Nadine is among the few protesters and mocks the "exhausted" soldiers for supposedly chasing rapists and murderers.
Most of the protesters that day are military veterans. Jay Carey, who served 20 years including in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, calls Washington "a test run for martial law." That same day the president signs an executive order, of uncertain legality according to the narration, making flag burning a felony with a one-year penalty. The veterans immediately decide to go burn a flag at the White House. Marine admits to loving "that bad idea" at once. The narration notes that American law treats flag burning as symbolic expression protected by the First Amendment. Carey burns the flag "as a protest to that illegal fascist president." He refuses to put it out, calling it his right, and is taken away. The veterans say they swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Marine says this was an early view of something that would spread: the use of the army and federal forces against civilians, soon in Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, and Minneapolis.
Will
Among the protesters, one young man stands out because young demonstrators are so rare. Will is 23 and from Michigan. His parents voted for Trump. He came to spend the summer in Washington protesting what he calls the fascist drift of the administration. His sign reads: "We won't be the generation that lost its country to fascism." He says he is fighting his country's decline. In bad weather he shelters at the Peace Vigil, a tent set up in 1981 to protest nuclear proliferation, according to the narration. He is outraged by the apathy of his fellow citizens, especially young people, and asks Marine for an interview because he has things to say. Marine promises to arrange it later. Events in the neighborhood get in the way.
The Neighborhood Becomes a Front Line
In September, masked and armed agents become part of daily life in Mount Pleasant. On the first day of school, Marine sees two SUVs with tinted windows pass the school. The assistant principal, in a fluorescent vest, follows them on foot with a walkie-talkie to raise the alarm. Helicopters circle low over the neighborhood, and one resident insists it cannot be a normal flight pattern. Every evening at 7 p.m. neighbors bang pots and pans, and children copy them for fun. The neighborhood organizes emergency numbers, online fundraisers, home food deliveries, and legal aid for undocumented residents.
Marine's son's teacher sends word of a farewell party for a classmate, David, who is leaving for El Salvador because his parents have been deported. Latino children are now taken to school by white parents. Olivia, a second grader, was born in the US and is an American citizen. Her parents are from Mexico and have lived, worked, and paid taxes in the US for 20 years without legal status. A neighbor, Felipe, takes her to and from school every day. Her mother Laura, a social worker taking university classes, relies on classmates for rides. Her father Diego risks arrest every day on his way to his restaurant job. The parents had to find words to explain the situation to Olivia.
Tearing Down the Peace Tent
At the White House, during the Israeli prime minister's fourth official visit in eight months, Marine finds Brian Glenn in a bad mood. The narration says he dislikes how much foreign affairs are crowding out the "America First" promise to put Americans' problems first. He then volunteers that he was the one who got the peace tent removed. He recounts asking Trump in the Oval Office about the "blue tent" in front of the White House while the president was talking about beautifying DC. In the footage, Trump says he was not aware of it. Glenn calls it an eyesore. Trump replies: "Take it down. Take it down today, right now."
Someone had sat at the vigil 24 hours a day for 44 years, according to the footage. It was where Will spent his days. When someone tells him that he is the vigil and it will survive through him, he rejects that. After three months of daily protest, the narration says, he believes less and less that a raised sign invites dialogue. He tells Marine that even in a losing battle, it matters that those committing transgressions know there was resistance: "if evil is beating good, it's important that it's not easy."
After Charlie Kirk's Assassination
Jay Carey appears before a federal judge in a tense atmosphere: right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk has just been assassinated. Outside, Don and Donna have come to support him. They say Kirk's killing is heating things up and worry about First Amendment freedoms for liberals and Trump opponents, but say they will keep protesting. The narration describes an online campaign, launched by Vice President J.D. Vance, to catalog posts deemed negative about Kirk and identify their authors. Vance is shown urging people to call out anyone celebrating the murder "and hell, call their employer." Marine reports that 600 Americans were denounced and lost their jobs. Donna says her usually reserved son asked her to text him every night to confirm she had not been arrested.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's Fall
In November, Glenn sends Marine a link to a video Greene posted on X from her living room in Georgia. She says that standing up for women "raped at 14 years old, trafficked and used by rich, powerful men" should not get her called a traitor and threatened by the president she fought for. The narration says that after she joined Democrats in pushing to declassify the Jeffrey Epstein files, the president cast her out and MAGA trolls threatened her with death. Trump is shown saying he doesn't think her life is in danger and that "frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her." Greene announces her resignation, effective January 5, 2026, saying she refuses to be "a battered wife hoping it all goes away."
Glenn brings Marine to the Capitol for one of Greene's last votes. Marine describes the movement's former attack dog, now ostracized, as having changed tone to attract sympathy. Greene says she won't miss the "toxic political environment." She complains that most members of Congress never get to bring their bills to the floor. The narration adds that no Congress in American history has passed so few laws as under Trump's second term, and that the legislative branch has abdicated in favor of the executive. Asked about her legacy, Greene points to a bill that codified the president's executive order renaming the gulf. Marine observes that "Gulf of America" has become reality, at least on MAGA hats.
Winter, Minneapolis, and a Lawyer's Phone Number
2026 begins with what the narration calls the harshest winter in 150 years. At home, Donna shows Marine a protest sign she made: "Caution ICE ahead," with an ICE agent and three bloody marks on a car. In Minneapolis, large numbers of residents protest ICE raids, and federal agents shoot dead a mother and then a 37-year-old nurse. Authorities call the deaths justified, and an official calls one shooting "an act of domestic terrorism." Donna says that if they can kill someone in cold blood sitting in her car, right after she smiled and said she wasn't mad, it makes her scared.
On their son's advice, the couple hire a lawyer, Ashley Akers, a former Justice Department prosecutor who worked on January 6th cases. The narration says she and the other prosecutors on those trials were fired or resigned when Trump returned. Akers tells them to memorize her number or write it on themselves in Sharpie. The narration cites a presidential memorandum under which anti-American, anti-capitalist, or anti-Christian views, and hostility toward traditional views on family, religion, and morality, may be treated as domestic terrorism. Asked whether Donna could be labeled a domestic terrorist, Akers says Minneapolis shows "anyone could be labeled a domestic terrorist so long as they're not in pursuit of the objectives endorsed by the administration." Asked whether the justice system is still independent of the executive, she says the DOJ is no longer independent and is openly under White House control.
Marine treats what follows as confirmation. The Department of Justice displays the president's face, as do the Departments of Labor and Agriculture. Trump's name goes up in gold letters on the US Institute of Peace and on the Kennedy Center, and appears on passports and national park passes. It is soon to appear on Washington's airport and on New York's Penn Station, whose renovations are overseen by Justin Shubow in his new role leading a council on beautifying transportation infrastructure.
The Arch of Trump
Nearly a year after their first meeting, Marine meets Shubow at the site of the planned Arch of Trump. He says he suggested the idea to the president: a 75-foot triumphal arch for the country's 250th anniversary. The president was very enthusiastic and posted his own plans on Truth Social. The narration says his version is 249 feet high, one and a half times more massive than the Arc de Triomphe and three times the size of Shubow's proposal. Shown an image of a monumental version with giant statues, Shubow calls it "just a provocation" and "just AI." He comments on the size of the figures ("it's like North Korea... it's ridiculous") and says that's why he doesn't want to talk about it. Asked how his own proposal differed, he says he can't say: "it's politics," and he can speak "when the history books are written." Marine reads this as someone choosing silence over openly distancing himself from the president, in an administration that tolerates dissent poorly.
Will's Death
A message brings the news that Will has taken his own life. On a freezing evening, about 30 people gather in front of the White House, which Marine says looks more and more like a bunker. Speakers describe him as a Western Michigan University graduate, past president of the university's skydiving club, a leader in its geology club, a 2020 Congressional Medal of Merit recipient, and someone who spent a year studying in Leuven, Belgium. One speaker says Will packed 60 years of life into 23. She says that as the days went on she could see him realizing he would not make the big difference he wanted. He had hoped many young people would join him. She tells the crowd that most people make little differences, and that passersby who see a sign may take its message home and look it up.
Brian Glenn's Last Day
Glenn resigns from his White House post to follow Greene. On his last morning he delivers six pounds of Chick-fil-A to the White House staff, which Marine calls a final bow to the power that is banishing them. He jokes that the White House is releasing UFO files on his last day. An adviser suggests the president might grant him a moment. Glenn refuses an Iran-related assignment for his final live report and instead uses it to criticize the movement's "influencers" and meme-makers as "the most harmful to our movement." Marine calls this the cult-like machine he helped build turning on him and Greene. Asked whether he'd rather be on the outside, he answers: "Outside. More comfortable." He checks his phone all day, but the president never says goodbye in person.
Glenn's UFO remark turns out to be true in a different sense. The White House publishes a website about "aliens" that warns they "walk among us," shop in the same stores, attend the same classrooms as "our children," and "embedded themselves into our society." A map of arrests makes clear the targets are undocumented immigrants. The site includes a one-click link to report people to immigration police.
The Frog in the Water
After 18 months of filming, Marine invokes the boiling frog: a frog dropped into hot water jumps out, but one heated slowly grows numb and dies. In nearly two years, Marine says, there has been no real awakening, and Americans seem to have grown used to the water heating up.
Half the people Marine followed have left the scene. Brian Glenn and Marjorie Taylor Greene are back in Georgia, keeping away from Washington. Laura, Diego, and Olivia have settled in Chiapas, Mexico, where Olivia, an American citizen leaving the only country she had known, has started third grade. The charges against Jay Carey were dropped, and he has returned to North Carolina. Don and Donna remain, going to No Kings demonstrations to feel less alone, and they have memorized their lawyer's phone number. Nadine keeps trolling the president around the White House with her banner. As Marine closes this logbook of Washington under Trump's second term, Marine learns that Will left behind a manuscript. It is titled Democracy.
My name is Marine. I live in Washington. I'm a journalist accredited at the White House as a US correspondent for French television.
I straddle two worlds, the heart of Trumpist power and the neighborhood where I live. Populated by Democrats in a city that voted 92.5% for Kamala Harris. My neighbors are civil servants, public administration employees, and immigrants from Latin America. A progressive microcosm that will very quickly find itself targeted by the administration.
I have a front row seat to observe those who make the decisions and those who suffer the consequences. Because the president announced it from the outset, his revenge would be terrible.
Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, the honorable Donald John Trump.
Day one of the new Trump administration.
In one hour, the president-elect signs more executive orders than his predecessor did in half a term.
The first item that President Trump is signing is a freeze on all federal hiring.
The next item here is the withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty.
The former reality TV star turns the inauguration into a wrestling halftime show.
Nine straight hours of inaugural spectacle, during which the enemies of the people are ritually named. Civil servants, environmental defenders, the media, sexual minorities, immigrants.
Within 48 hours of Donald Trump's return to power, 538 people are arrested by immigration police in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Seattle.
Mount Pleasant, my neighborhood, is not only a neighborhood of white Democratic civil servants. It is also a Latino neighborhood. Very quickly, a number of Signal groups are created in my neighborhood to exchange information about the situation.
For my neighbors' safety, the names of people and groups have been changed.
I receive an alert. An ICE raid has just taken place at the end of my street, at my hairdresser's. The arrests begin.
Three blocks away is the school my children attend. A bilingual English-Spanish public school. On my neighborhood moms chat group, I ask, "Can ICE get inside the school?" The answer is yes. They are no longer sanctuary places: hospitals, places of worship, courtrooms, schools. Immigration police can now enter anywhere.
During the same period, my neighbors begin losing their jobs. In one house out of three, someone has lost their job.
Tens of thousands of civil servants are fired, accused of having wasted public money.
Employees are escorted out by security guards. They have no more than 15 minutes to collect their belongings before being put outside in front of the cameras.
Under Trump, too, cruelty is not an accident, but an end in itself.
I'm facing job loss and here my health insurance and his health insurance is tied to our work. So, I don't know what will happen.
It's horrible.
Yeah. We've dedicated our life to service and this is how they're treating us. It's disgusting.
In this small gathering, one woman catches my eye.
I know why, but I put down my camera to photograph her. Perhaps something of a Jane Fonda vibe.
A few weeks later, I happen to see my Jane Fonda again at the Federal Courthouse in Washington. Today, it is the president's second favorite target fighting for its survival. The press.
Today, but it's just pretty crazy. The case that we just left from was the one around the Associated Press not being allowed into the various events at the White House.
The Trump administration has cut off all access for Associated Press journalists and photographers to punish them. The international news agency continues to call the Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico and not Gulf of America as the president has renamed it.
Jane is actually named Donna and her husband is Don. They come from Austin, Texas. They gave up their quiet retirement to move here, attend every protest, and sit in on hearings like today's.
We are very scared at what's happening. We didn't expect this to be happening so quickly, what they've been able to do just through executive orders by virtue of what the president has demanded. And so, we are here so that we as American citizens can bear witness to what is happening in our country.
Questioning of media representatives is frequent at the start of this term.
I filmed the hearing of the heads of public broadcasting, NPR radio and PBS television, before a congressional investigative committee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Republican representative from Georgia is known for her explosive temperament, her sometimes conspiratorial views, and her devotion to President Trump.
And in 2022, I'm going to blow away the Democrats' socialist agenda.
She accuses public broadcasting of pushing trans proselytism on children.
Like featuring a drag queen on the show Let's Learn, a show targeted toward young children ages three to eight years old. This means that PBS is one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry.
The program from which this photo was taken was never broadcast on PBS public television. No matter.
Between speaking turns, I have the impression that the woman everyone here calls by her initials, MTG, is glancing in my direction. I look around. Her partner is sitting just to my left.
That is Brian Glenn, the president's favorite journalist. He has followed Trump since 2016, in the United States, abroad, at all his rallies, and at each of his trials. A few days before sitting next to me in this congressional hearing room, he was in the Oval Office with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Why don't you wear a suit? You're the highest level in this country's office, and you refuse to wear a suit. Just want to see if you—do you own a suit?
Yeah, yeah, problems.
A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting—
And then I don't have such—I will wear costume after this war will finish. Okay. Yes, maybe one, something like—
Maybe something like yours, yes. Maybe something better. I don't know.
The software.
I tell myself that these are the people I need to find a way to approach to try to understand the MAGA world's obsession with retribution. At the exit, an impromptu press conference takes shape.
Anybody else?
Should the defense attorney—
What country are you—wait, what country are you from?
Okay, we don't give a crap about your opinion and your reporting. Why don't you go back to your country where you have a major migrant problem? We're talking about fake news that was funded with federal funding from American taxpayers. That's what this is about today, not journalists from the UK that care about their own—
Journalists is being really polite.
My attempt to make contact stops there for the moment. Soon after, at the White House, I run into Marjorie Taylor Greene's partner, Brian Glenn.
Can you tell me about your media? What's Real America's Voice?
Yeah. I would say Real America's Voice, we reach millions, tens of millions every day across this country. And I'd say our core viewership is really someone that puts the MAGA agenda, the Christian kind of a nationalist, a populist, people that are really in touch with this country. They love this country.
This is Real America's Voice and we're everywhere. From 5:00 a.m. to midnight, we're covering the stories that matter all day, every day. At 10:00 a.m., War Room with Steve Bannon, uncensored and unfiltered. Midday brings The Charlie Kirk Show and on the weekends, even more power and faith.
I think I was the first new media outlet in history for the White House to actually travel on Air Force One.
We roll through the—
New media is the term coined to name all the newly credentialed pro-Trump media. The MAGA world has its Newspeak. Some words appear, others are banned.
The new authorities are cleaning up the websites of public administrations. 8,000 pages containing one or more of these words are deleted.
Woman, gender, equality, politics, expression, slavery, black.
At the bottom of 16th Street, in front of the square bordering the White House, huge yellow letters are torn out of the asphalt with jackhammers.
Black Lives Matter. The three words disappear in a matter of hours. And with them, the assertion of racial equality, the slogan of the 2020 protests against police violence. By order of the president.
I just wanted to collect it because I think it's a beautiful part of history that we're taking away. And yeah, I just wanted something to remember for it.
I am struck by the absence of demonstrations, the absence of resistance in a city that is more than 40% black. A woman, alone, holds a banner. She's crying.
For four months, for four months I tried to tell people about Project 2025. But people just did not heed. I don't know why people did not take it seriously.
Nadine camped on the square in 2020. Part of America was crying out in anger after the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Born in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, Nadine became an American citizen 30 years ago, almost to the day.
My story is I bought into this American BS. I was sold on American exceptionalism. I was sold on American checks and balances. I was sold on the nonsense. And I am learning after 37 years here, it is a farce. It's a joke. And I am not going to be part of it. So, I am going back to my original [__] country, which is Trinidad and Tobago, because my original [__] country is not fascist.
The president has big plans for the federal capital, now blossoming with construction projects. The man holding Washington's architectural destiny in his hands is this one, Justin Shubow, the president's architecture adviser.
When Thomas Jefferson talked about the US Capitol, he said it was the first temple to the sovereignty of the people built using Athenian taste for a people looking far beyond Athenian destinies.
As head of the Commission of Fine Arts under Trump one, he authored a series of executive orders imposing the classical style on all public building construction. Make federal architecture beautiful again.
Talking about beautifying federal buildings—
Right.
Isn't beautiful very subjective?
No, I don't think it's subjective. I think there is widespread agreement among the general public about which buildings are beautiful, which buildings are ugly. And in fact, there are surveys backing this up.
But before constructing buildings inspired by neo-Roman or neo-Greek styles, the capital's brutalist buildings must first be made to disappear. An inheritance, in his view, of the socialist aesthetic of Kennedy's America.
The Hoover Building, FBI headquarters, to disappear. The Forrestal Building, headquarters of the Department of Energy, to disappear. The headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, designed by architect Marcel Breuer, a listed building, to disappear.
You can critique Trump in many different ways, but he does have his finger on the pulse of ordinary Americans and getting a sense of what they want to see in their federal buildings.
Trump is on the side of the people, and the people are never wrong. That is Justin's knockout argument and that of all the masters of Washington, the new Rome for a Caesar of a new kind.
I go to every demonstration, searching for forms of resistance.
Every day from dawn to dusk.
Almost every time, I run into Donna and Don, the retired couple from Texas.
Before long, I feel as though I know all the protesters. Kind, white, liberal boomers, part of only the half of Americans over 60 who receive a pension, and who can spend their days protesting.
In the heart of summer, the president uses the assault of a young DOGE recruit, the Department of Government Efficiency, as a pretext to declare a state of emergency and order the deployment of the National Guard in the capital.
Somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt last night. We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with DC, and we're going to clean it up real quick.
The presence of armed soldiers in the streets is unprecedented here. Since 1878, a law has prohibited the military from carrying out law enforcement operations on national territory.
Protesters, still just a few in number, try to demonstrate. Among them is Nadine, ever faithful.
Do you see how exhausted the five of them standing over there are? They look exhausted from running down, pursuing rapists and murderers.
But above all, military veterans. Jay Carey served for 20 years in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Washington, DC is a test run for martial law in our country. You see that he's already looking at sending troops to other states. And it's not going to get any better. No one's stopping. We're here to let them know that we won't stand for this.
By coincidence, that very day, the president decides to sign an executive order of uncertain legality.
All right. Well, the president signed an executive order making it a felony to burn the American flag. Yeah, it'll be a one-year penalty.
Yep.
In jail.
Yep.
I want to go to the White House and burn a flag.
I'm down with it.
I'm with it.
You know, right.
I immediately love that bad idea.
Right there signed an executive order saying name that it was illegal to burn the American—
Burning the flag is considered under American law a form of symbolic expression protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
I'm burning this flag as a protest to that illegal fascist president that sits in that house.
I'm not putting it out. I can burn it. It's my right.
This is a public place.
It's not going to catch anything else on fire.
These service members remind us they swore an oath to the Constitution. They say they are ready to do anything to defend it.
We will defend this United States of the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Where is he being taken?
All right, let's close. Let's go.
I'm witnessing something that will in fact become widespread. The use of the army and federal forces against civilians. Soon also in Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis.
The greatest country in the world.
In this face-off between soldiers and soldiers, there is a young man. Impossible not to notice him. Young people demonstrating are so scarce.
Get out of our streets. Get out of our streets.
His name is Will. He's 23 years old from Michigan. He tells me his parents voted for Trump. And that he came to spend this summer in Washington to protest against what he calls the fascist drift of the Trump administration. He spends his days holding up signs in front of the White House.
Here's a man that has a sign that says we won't be the generation that lost its country to fascism.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good. How long you been out here holding your sign?
So this is day 11 for me. I've even been here for 90 days. And I am concerned with the direction of our country. And I am fighting its decline.
When the weather's tough, he takes shelter at the Peace Vigil. A tent set up in 1981 to protest nuclear proliferation. Will is outraged by the apathy of his fellow citizens. And especially of young people. He wants me to interview him. He has things to say.
You're allowed to disagree in public.
I tell him we'll arrange a time for an interview. Later. Because these days my neighborhood is in crisis.
Armed, masked men burst into my daily life and that of my children.
Smile. We're taking America back, baby.
This is for America. The United States is number one.
First day of school. I see two SUVs with tinted windows pass in front of the school. Wearing a fluorescent yellow vest, the assistant principal follows them on foot with his walkie-talkie to raise the alarm.
My phone vibrates again and again.
Residents are on edge. Interactions with law enforcement are tense.
[__] you. What in hell? [__] ICE. [__] ICE and [__] your mother.
That September, my neighborhood lives
With the sound of helicopters flying low overhead.
You can't tell me this is a [__] flight pattern. They're literally just circling.
Every evening at 7:00 p.m., neighbors bang on pots and pans to make their anger heard. The children have fun imitating them.
The neighborhood quickly organizes itself: emergency numbers, online fundraisers, home food deliveries, and legal aid for undocumented neighbors.
I receive a message from my son's teacher. Farewell party in class today to say goodbye to little David, who's leaving for El Salvador. His parents have been deported. Latino children are now being taken to school by white parents.
Olivia is in second grade. She was born here. She's an American citizen. Her parents are from Mexico.
They've lived, worked, and paid taxes in the US for 20 years, but they have no legal status here. Felipe, a neighbor and fellow school parent, is the one who takes her to school and brings her home every day.
Laura is a social worker and she's taking university classes. Classmates drive her there and back. Her husband, Diego, works in a restaurant. Every day, he takes the risk of being arrested on his way to work. They had to find the words to explain to Olivia.
For a long time.
See me, mama, see me, mama.
Oh, Lord. Oh my goodness. Oh, yes.
At the White House, I meet again with Brian Glenn on the sidelines of an official visit by the Israeli Prime Minister, the fourth in eight months.
Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
He's in a bad mood. He takes a dim view of the growing space that foreign interventions are taking among his president's priorities. It is a far cry from the America First mantra, the campaign promise to put Americans' problems before the affairs of the world. Because there are real problems to solve here, close by. And Brian does not hesitate to do his part.
Hey, if you want me to talk about the— Hey, I'll tell you what. If you want me to talk about that peace tent I took down.
About that?
The peace tent.
The peace tent, sir?
Yeah. I took that down.
One day in the Oval Office, President Trump was talking about beautifying DC. And so, I asked him. I said, "Well, what about the blue tent that's in front of the White House?" And he was not aware of it. He goes, "What do you mean a blue tent?" I said, "It's been there since 1978. It was originally a peace vigil tent."
Where is this blue tent?
In front of the White House in the North Lawn on the other side of the black gate and Lafayette—
I haven't known this.
All of us in here ride by it every day. It is an eyesore.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, let me—
Blah blah blah blah blah. Take it down. Take it down today, right now.
24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 44 years, someone has sat here.
The Peace Vigil is where Will spends his days.
So, once they're done, you can go right back to your vigil.
Okay.
The vigil will still remain because of you. You are the vigil.
No, no, that's not true. No. I just want to violate it.
He violated the vigil. He violated the First A—
My—
After three months of daily demonstrations, he believes less and less in the virtue of a raised sign as an invitation to dialogue.
Even if you're in a losing battle, where you're outmanned, I think it's important that the people who are making these transgressions against you know that there was resistance. I think that if evil is beating good, it's important that it's not easy.
Jay Carey, the veteran who set fire to the flag a few days earlier, is brought before a judge at the federal court in an increasingly heavy atmosphere. Far-right influencer Charlie Kirk has just been assassinated.
He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent.
All right.
Outside the courthouse, I run into Don and Donna, who've come to support the veteran.
Things are heating up here in DC. We had the murder of Charlie Kirk, a far-right young person who had swayed a lot of young Republican men to come his way. With the murder of that, I think we're getting more and more heated as far as First Amendment freedoms for liberals and for people not in favor of President Trump, which has us concerned, but we are still going to protest.
Online posts deemed negative about Charlie Kirk are cataloged, their authors identified in an online witch hunt launched by Vice President J.D. Vance.
So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer.
600 Americans are denounced and lose their jobs.
I actually had my son reach out to me a couple weeks ago. He's very reserved, doesn't usually share his feelings, and he said to me, "Mom, would you mind texting me every night to make sure you have not been arrested and that you are at home?"
One November evening, I receive a text from Brian. A link to a video Marjorie Taylor Greene has just posted on her X account.
Hi, everyone.
The representative films herself in her living room in Georgia.
Standing up for American women who were raped at 14 years old, trafficked and used by rich, powerful men should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States whom I fought for.
Ever since she joined forces with Democrats to have the files of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein declassified, the President immediately cast her out and online MAGA trolls are threatening her with death.
Who's that?
Marjorie Greene, he says.
Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don't think your life is in danger. Frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her.
I refuse to be a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better. I'll be resigning from office with my last day being January 5th, 2026.
Brian takes me to meet Marjorie at the Capitol for one of her very last votes in the chamber.
You should stay. You should change your mind and stay. Give him some grief. He deserves it. He's not a nice guy.
The MAGA movement's attack dog, now ostracized and soon to be without elected office, Marjorie changed her tone to attract sympathy.
I will not miss the toxic political environment. I won't miss that at all. Congress is a frustrating place. That's where most of my frustrations are. It's unfortunate that pretty much most members of Congress never get a chance to bring their bills to the floor for a vote, and that's something I very much disagree with.
In fact, never in American history had a Congress passed so few laws as under Trump two. The legislative branch has abdicated in favor of the executive. But if one law is to remain for Marjorie, it's this one.
That was another bill I passed that was his executive order.
The new name, Gulf of America, has become a reality. At least on MAGA hats.
The year 2026 begins with a snowstorm and polar temperatures. The harshest winter in 150 years. I meet Don and Donna again at their home.
Here I have one that I made: "Caution, ICE ahead," and it's got an ICE agent with three bloody marks on a car.
A thousand miles from here, in Minneapolis, something erupts. Citizens take to the streets in large numbers to protest ICE raids. A mother, then a 37-year-old nurse, are shot dead by federal agents.
Deaths that the authorities say were justified.
You asked about a shooting that we just had in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was an act of domestic terrorism.
If they can kill one in cold blood just sitting in her car right after she said, "Hey dude, I'm not mad at you," and smiled, it makes me somewhat scared.
Donna and Don continue to demonstrate and regularly find themselves on the front pages of the media. Since the deaths in Minneapolis, they have taken their son's advice and hired a lawyer.
Well, look who is here. Yes. And so let's have you take off your coat and then we'll give you a hug so that we don't feel it all the way through your—
And not just any lawyer. Ashley Akers, a former prosecutor at the Department of Justice.
Can you hang it up there?
Joining me now is Ashley Akers. She was one of the many prosecutors who worked on the January 6th cases.
When Trump makes his triumphant return to the White House, Ashley and all the prosecutors who had worked on the trials of the January 6th rioters are fired or resign.
Memorize my phone number. And if you can't, write it on yourself.
I don't know if I have to go with that, too.
Yeah, exactly. That would be great. The good news is we have Sharpies in all colors.
Presidential memorandum: may be considered domestic terrorism the expression of anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian opinions.
And hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
Could Don and Donna be labeled domestic terrorists?
I think the example from Minneapolis shows that anyone could be labeled a domestic terrorist so long as they're not in pursuit of the objectives endorsed by the administration.
Is the judicial branch still independent from the executive branch?
No, the DOJ isn't independent anymore. And it's not like they're hiding that. It is out in the open under the control of the White House.
Ashley was right. The Department of Justice begins displaying the president's face. Like the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture.
Trump in gold letters on the US Institute of Peace. Trump on the Kennedy Center, the country's largest public performing arts venue. On passports, on national park passes. And soon, Trump on Washington's airport and on Penn Station in New York, whose renovations are overseen by Justin Shubow as director of the Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council.
Nearly a year after our first meeting, I see him again on the site where construction of the Arch of Trump is set to begin. He was the one who suggested it to the president. A 75-foot-high triumphal arch to commemorate the country's 250th anniversary.
We have the research.
The president is enthusiastic. Very enthusiastic. And posts his own plans on his Truth Social network. Change of scale: 249 feet high. One and a half times more massive than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Three times the size of Justin's proposal.
So, what are the chances that Washington ends up with this one, for instance?
I don't think that's— This is just a provocation.
Okay. And do you know who the statues—
No, this is just AI. I think it's supposed to be generic—
Okay.
Men. And also, look how tall they would be. It's like North Korea.
Yeah.
It's ridiculous.
I understand.
Yeah, exactly. That's why I don't want to talk about that.
The idea that you suggested to the president, how different was it?
I can't say.
Say?
I can't say.
Is it one of the things you can't say now?
Well, because it's politics. When the history books are written, I can say.
Justin would rather remain silent than openly distance himself from the president's architectural delusions. Dissent is poorly tolerated by the administration.
I receive a message from Dana. Bad news. Will, the young protester from Michigan, has taken his own life.
On a freezing evening, in front of the White House, which looks more and more like a bunker, about 30 people gathered to pay tribute to Will. I recognize familiar faces.
Will was a cum laude graduate of Western Michigan University, a past president of the Western Michigan Skydive Broncos, a leader in Western's Geology Club, the 2020 Congressional Medal of Merit recipient. He spent a year abroad at KU University in Leuven, Belgium. I said that Will packed in 60 years of my life in his 23.
As the days went on, I could see that he was starting to realize that he was not going to make the big difference that he wanted to make. He was hoping that a lot of young people would come and he could help, they could all band together and help the country out.
But what I want everybody to realize is, while most of us won't make a big difference in this world, we make little differences. And what we don't know is, when we hold a sign, all the people that walk by, they may not stop. They may not say something, but they'll take that, whatever your message is, they'll take that to heart, and they may go back home and look it up. That may give them something to think about.
Good morning.
Hey, what's going on? How are you?
Good. How are you?
Well, just picking up some Chick-fil-A—
Yeah, I see you.
For the staff. It's my last day.
Brian is resigning effective tonight.
Well, I was just sitting here. I just was reflecting on our last couple years and how much we've gone through. Apparently, we're releasing UFOs today. So, apparently, on my last day, we're going to release files on the UFOs. Maybe it's a good thing I'm getting out of there in time.
He's chosen to follow Marjorie into exile.
Yeah, it's a lot of chicken. It's a lot of chicken. Let's go.
Six pounds of fried chicken, a breakfast he delivers in person to the White House staff. Final bow to the power that is banishing them.
The president has reportedly been informed of his departure, an adviser tells him. Perhaps he will grant him a moment today. A few seconds to say—
What do you want me to talk about? I'm going to talk about—
For his final live report from the White House, there's no addressing the sore subject.
I'm going to talk about Iran. The last thing I want to do on my last day is talk about— First of all, what is from Iran? I got that this morning. And I was like, you got to be [__] kidding me. I ain't doing that.
He seizes the opportunity of his final live broadcast to settle scores with the MAGA movement.
There's so much negativity in our movement. There's so many influencers. There's people that create memes for a living. That's meant to—
The cult-like machine he helped create and which is turning against him and Marjorie.
They are the ones that are the most harmful to our movement. Thank you. God bless.
Nobody is more on the inside than you are. Would you rather go back to being on the outside?
Outside. Outside. More comfortable. All right.
All day long, Brian keeps checking his phone. But no, the president will not say goodbye to him in person.
Hello.
That day, Brian was telling the truth. The White House publishes a website about aliens. The website warns, "They walk among us. They've shopped in the same stores, attend the same classrooms as our children, live seemingly normal human existences, and under the cover of darkness, they embedded themselves into our society."
A map of arrests dispels any doubt. It is undocumented foreigners indeed who are being described. The White House has even thought to include a link allowing people to report others to immigration police with one click.
Olivia, who is an American citizen, will leave her country, the only one she's ever known.
ICE raid alert. Masked federal agents on a market bicycle.
It has been 18 months since they started filming in and around the White House. I think of the frog experiment. If a frog is suddenly plunged into hot water, it jumps out. If it is placed in cold water and the water is heated very gradually, the frog becomes numb. It gets used to the temperature and eventually it dies.
In nearly two years, I have not observed any real awakening. Americans seem to have grown accustomed to the water heating up.
A whole civilization will die tonight. And I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.
Favor to arrest them all.
My reign begins.
Half of the characters I followed have disappeared from the scene.
We've got somebody in the house.
Brian and Marjorie have returned to Georgia. They're keeping away from Washington. Laura, Diego and Olivia have settled in the Chiapas region of Mexico. Olivia has started third grade.
The charges against veteran Jay Carey have been dropped. He's gone back home to North Carolina.
Don and Donna remain using the No Kings demonstration to feel less alone. They have learned their lawyer's phone number by heart.
207-377-2597.
And don't say anything to the cops.
And Nadine, who continues to troll the president around the White House with her banner.
As I'm closing this logbook of Washington under Trump 2, I learned that Will, before ending his life, left behind a manuscript. It's titled Democracy.
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