New York Times: “There in the Cabinet Room — which is starting to take on the gilded-cage look of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office — all of the president’s men and women took their turns, each working a little bit harder than the last to offer Mr. Trump praise and to assure him that they were working to tackle his long list of grievances.”

“That list is as ever-growing as it is specific to Mr. Trump’s pet peeves and political ambitions. It includes preventing ‘transgender for everybody’ in American sports; using a heavy hand — perhaps the death penalty, the president said — to crack down on violent crime; the ongoing threat of windmills; the foul state of traffic medians; the speed with which water flows; and the attempts at securing peace deals for as many as seven international wars, a number that seems to grow by the day.”

Washington Post: In marathon meeting, Trump enjoys a playbook more familiar abroad.

“President Trump is gradually testing, stretching and gutting the independence of America’s major institutions, leaving few stones unturned in his pursuit of unchecked power,” Axios reports.

“In Trump’s vision of America, authority flows only from his consent.“

“In just seven months, Trump has consolidated vast power by following a simple playbook: Capture what he can, contest what he can’t and punish those who resist.”

President Trump celebrated after Cracker Barrel backed down following the president’s comments on the controversy over its new logo.

“Lawyers for Jack Smith, the former special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump, have struck back for the first time against some of the accusations conservatives have leveled against him, denouncing an ethics complaint as ‘imaginary and unfounded,’” the New York Times reports.

“For months, Mr. Smith has remained silent as the president and some of his senior advisers, including top Justice Department officials, publicly attacked him, accusing Mr. Smith of engaging in wrongdoing for overseeing two criminal inquiries and indictments of Mr. Trump. The investigations involved whether Mr. Trump mishandled classified documents after he left office as well as his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”

“President Trump’s bid to fire a member of the Federal Reserve board is a new escalation of his efforts to amass more power over American government and society: Congress generations ago structured the agency, crucial to the health of the economy, to be independent of White House control,” the New York Times reports.

“In purporting to fire the board member, Lisa Cook, Mr. Trump is setting up another test of how far the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court will let him go in eroding the checks and balances Congress has long imposed on executive power.”

“His attempt to fire Ms. Cook presents a new twist. It raises the question of whether he alone can decide whether there is cause to fire an official at an independent agency whose leaders are protected by law from arbitrary removal — or whether courts will be willing and able to intervene if judges believe his justification is a pretext.”

Aaron Blake: Trump’s new “dictator” comment betrays his trick for expanding his power.