Donald Trump ’s recent turn as host of the Kennedy Center Honors, a first for any president, was the culmination of his purge, earlier this year, of half the center’s bipartisan board. Like other bodies shaped in his image since his return to power, Trump packed it with Republicans and other loyalists who then, inevitably, named him chairman of the board.

This extreme makeover is but one data point in Trump’s systematic unraveling of Washington, which has had to endure everything from military deployments and the dismantlement of decades-old programs and institutions to even the armed, hostile takeover of the US Institute of Peace. All this, in addition to the mass firing sprees throughout the federal government, has come to define Trump’s second presidency.

A linchpin of this s

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