By YAN ZHUANG NYTimes News Service
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How long does it take you to wet your hair in the shower? A few seconds? A minute?

The president of the United States, who has long complained about being unable to coax more than a dribble or trickle of water from his showers, says it takes him much longer.

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“I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office. “I stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.”

Much of the world was focused at that moment on his trade war, but Trump wanted to talk about showers. He offered this insight while signing an executive order to loosen restrictions on water flow from American shower heads. The order directs Energy Secretary Chris Wright to rescind a definition of shower heads first implemented by President Barack Obama.

It is the second time Trump as president has attempted to redefine a shower head. A rule he introduced in his first term drastically increased the amount of water that showers with multiple nozzles could use. The Biden administration later reversed that change.

“No longer will shower heads be weak and worthless,” the White House said in a news release Wednesday.

How big of an issue is this, really? And how many ways can you define a shower head?

For Trump, it has been a long-running crusade.

He has railed for years against low water pressure in bathrooms, an issue in some New York City high-rises. During his first term in the White House, he lamented that his showers did not supply enough water for him to achieve his “perfect” hair, part of a campaign against what he described as excessive government regulation.

“You take a shower, the water doesn’t come out,” he said in 2020. “You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair — I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect.”

At a dinner with Republican leaders in 2023, he repeated his complaint: “You know I have this gorgeous head of hair — when I take a shower, I want water to pour down on me. When you go into these new homes with showers, the water drips down slowly, slowly.”

Trump’s new order restores language from a 1992 federal law, enacted to conserve water, that prevented new American-made shower heads from spritzing more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. Some states, including California and Colorado, as well as New York City, have imposed their own lower rates.

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