Donald Trump’s second term is unlike his first. The politicians who challenged him are gone. The lawyers who once pushed back now choose their battles. What remains is an imperial president with almost no internal checks, using executive power to reshape everything from the economy, immigration and even the presidency itself.

Few journalists have covered Trump as closely as the New York Times journalist Jonathan Swan. Jonathan Freedland speaks to him about how the president has consolidated such power – and what it could mean for the US and the world