FILE - President Donald Trump holds a saber after using it to cut a cake at the Commander in Chief inaugural ball in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
In year one of his second presidency, Donald Trump wielded a wrecking ball — literal and metaphorical — to the ways of Washington and the traditional role of the U.S. in the world. Associated Press photographers documented it all.
Trump moved his inauguration indoors and gave the titans of the tech world prime seats in the Capitol Rotunda, which had been ransacked by his supporters only four years earlier. The Republican president empowered Elon Musk to fire thousands of federal employees — until the two titanic personalities had a falling-out.
An immigration crackdown began with border control and mushroomed into violence in U.S. cities where federal officers were dispatched.
Trump gilded the West Wing and demolished the East Wing. He fought U.S. media in front of cameras and in court. He repeatedly bent Congress to his will and resisted the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
As the first year drew to a close, Trump threatened to deploy U.S. military might in Minneapolis at the same time he pressed the case for a U.S. takeover of Greenland.
This is a photo gallery curated by Associated Press photo editors.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta.
FILE – Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, from left, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, arrive to attend the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – A group of migrants wait to be processed between two border walls separating Mexico and the United States in San Diego, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)FILE – President Donald Trump receives Marc Fogel, a Pittsburgh-area school teacher who was deemed wrongfully held in a Russian prison for years before being freed, at the White House in Washington, Feb. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)FILE – Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw he received from Argentina’s President Javier Milei, right, as they arrive to speak at the Conservative Political Action or CPAC Conference in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)FILE – Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as President Donald Trump listens in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mystyslav Chernov, File)FILE – As prisoners stand looking out from a cell, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)FILE – President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)FILE – President Donald Trump reads a copy of the New York Post as he arrives at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)FILE – A sunrise view of the U.S. Capitol as seen from the National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – Protesters against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown confront police on the 101 Freeway near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)FILE – California Highway Patrol officers dodge rocks thrown by protesters against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)FILE – U.S. Capitol Police remove protesters who started shouting as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget began to testify on proposed budget cuts, during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing at the Capitol in Washington, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)FILE – Republican members of Congress gather round to shake hands with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., center bottom, after he signed President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – Federal agents detain Paraguayan Carlos Javier Lopez Benitez, center, as they pull away his sister, Porfiria Lopez, a U.S. citizen, left, outside immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits federal building, in New York, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)FILE – President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pa., Aug. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – A child watches as DEA officers patrol along the National Mall in Washington, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)FILE – President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive for a press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – Oscar Villanueva holds a sign in support of talk show host Jimmy Kimmel outside El Capitan Entertainment Centre, where his late-night show is staged, in Los Angeles, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)FILE – President Donald Trump stands with Erika Kirk at the conclusion of a memorial for her husband, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, in Glendale, Ariz., Sept. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – Visitors take photos backdropped by a bronze painted sculpture depicting President Donald Trump and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, left front, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, third from right, and U.S. military senior leadership listen to President Donald Trump speak at Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va., Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)FILE – Construction workers, bottom right, atop the U.S. Treasury, watch as work continues on a largely demolished part of the East Wing to make room for a ballroom, at the White House in Washington, Oct. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)FILE – A gold-colored item embossed with the word ‘President’ sits on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Nov. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)FILE – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., second from right, and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., right, attend a news conference regarding the Epstein Files Transparency Act, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Nov. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)FILE – President Donald Trump puts on the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize presented to him by FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)FILE – President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walk arm in arm into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)FILE – Teyana Gibson Brown, standing in her doorway, wife of Garrison Gibson, reacts after a federal immigration officer used a battering ram to break down a door before arresting her husband, in Minneapolis, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)President Donald Trump departs after speaking with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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