The UnPopulist: Executive Watch

The DOJ Targets SPLC for Infiltrating White Nationalists and Helping FBI Do Its Job

Executive Watch — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:11:00 GMT

A hallmark of the Trump administration is its tolerance of overt racists, so it seems fitting that they would now be prosecuting the Southern Poverty Law Center—the legal bane of Klansmen and neo-Nazis—for infiltrating and exposing hate groups. But Donald Trump sees these groups as his allies, and he sees the SPLC as his enemy.

The Associated Press reports:

The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for inside information, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with more than $3 million paid to informants through a now-defunct program to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups. …
The indictment came shortly after the SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its disbanded informant program to gather intelligence on extremist group activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement. …
The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.
The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics…. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The case here seems to be that the SPLC was committing fraud for keeping its secret informants, well, secret. This is a standard that would prevent anyone from investigating or infiltrating such groups, which we can assume is the whole point.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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Trump Seeks New 'Investments' in His Crypto Memecoin Fund by Selling Access to Himself Even as Previous 'Investors' Lose Money

Executive Watch — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:51:00 GMT

Nearly a year ago, Donald Trump held one of the most flagrantly corrupt events of his administration—and that’s saying something. It was a dinner in which the top buyers of his cryptocurrency “memecoin” got exclusive access to him, in exchange for pouring money into a transparent con to make him richer. Now he’s doing it again, but with even less pretense.

Politico reports:

Eleven months ago, a gala dinner for major investors in the cryptocurrency token set off a buying frenzy from MAGA-loving crypto traders, outrage among Democrats and a headline-grabbing protest at the event. But a similar event planned for Saturday at Mar-a-Lago is highlighting a growing disenchantment with Trump’s crypto ventures.
Over the last year, investors have shunned the so-called $TRUMP memecoin, a type of collectible crypto token whose logo depicts Trump raising his fist in the air and the words “Fight Fight Fight.” The memecoin is currently down more than 95 percent from its January 2025 high. …
“Nobody likes it,” said Morten Christensen, a crypto investor who still plans to attend the Mar-a-Lago event and was at the 2025 dinner. “People are losing on the coin, and they are vocal. They are the people on Twitter like, ‘F--- this coin’ or ‘It’s a scam.’ And they’re right, basically.” …
The Mar-a-Lago event is being advertised as “THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CRYPTO & BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD!” It is open to the top 297 $TRUMP investors, who will get the chance to hear from an eclectic lineup of speakers that includes several crypto executives, boxing legend Mike Tyson, motivational coach Tony Robbins and Trump, who will speak during the event’s luncheon, according to promotional materials. He is expected to be in Washington later in the day for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. …
As of April 2025, the Trump family and its partners had made $320 million in memecoin-related trading fees.

Justin Sun, a Trump booster and business partner who got let off the hook by Trump for his own scams, is now complaining that the Trump family’s cryptocurrency trading company is ripping him off. But as Sen. Richard Blumenthal notes, in the article above, Trump has “normalized his corruption. … A lot of people have become inured to it.”

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Trump Envoy Asked FIFA's Italian President to Replace Iran's Soccer Team With Italy's in the World Cup

Executive Watch — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:46:00 GMT

Not content to meddle with college football in America, Donald Trump sees himself as a kind of king of the world entitled to dictate the terms of global athletics. Hence the news that he tried to fix the World Cup soccer championship in a weird attempt to ingratiate himself with the Italians. You can’t make this stuff up.

The Washington Post reports:

Paolo Zampolli, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump who is now serving as U.S. special envoy for global partnerships, has suggested that Italy replace Iran in this year’s World Cup, the quadrennial soccer tournament, which will be held starting in June in the United States, Mexico and Canada. …
Zampolli, in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, confirmed he had “recently” planted that idea with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, arguing that it would be “good for everybody” if Italy took Iran’s place. Zampolli said he also passed on the suggestion to Trump, who has said Iranian players are “welcome” while also calling Iran’s participation not “appropriate.” …
One person familiar with the overtures who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations said the outreach appeared to be aimed less at Italy’s politicians and more at currying favor with the Italian people—who have traditionally been seen as more pro-American than many Europeans, but more recently have soured on Washington, especially during the unpopular Iran war. …
Luciano Bonfiglio, president of the Italian National Olympic Committee, told reporters that “first of all, I don’t think it’s possible, and secondly, I’d feel offended. One needs to deserve going to the World Cup.” …
Trump has repeatedly inserted himself into what is typically the domain of FIFA and local organizing bodies, at times blurring the lines between sport and politics.

If the name Paolo Zampolli sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the guy who got ICE to deport the mother of his child to settle a custody dispute. In the Trump administration, it’s corruption all the way through, and they regard this as so normal they think everyone will just accept it while they openly rig the world’s biggest sports competition.

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FBI Targets the Reporter Who Exposed that Kash Patel's Girlfriend Was Obtaining Free Perks From the Agency

Executive Watch — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:07:00 GMT

Donald Trump has been itching to make reporting itself into a crime, and now some of his minions at the FBI are inching toward finding the way to do it: Label reporting as “stalking.” They used this approach in an investigation of The New York Times reporter who broke a story about FBI Director Kash Patel misusing agency resources for his girlfriend.

The Times itself reports:

The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.
Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter.
The scrutiny of Ms. Williamson is an example of the Trump administration examining whether to criminalize routine news gathering practices that are widely considered protected by the First Amendment.

The FBI’s premise seems to be that politically connected people enjoy extreme protections for their privacy, even in stories relevant to the abuse of public funds—while reporters enjoy no protections whatsoever. The government did not end up filing charges in this case, but the point of exposing this story is to prevent them from working up the nerve to do it.

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RFK Jr. Buries a Report Confirming the Efficacy of COVID Vaccines Because It Conflicts With His Quack Beliefs

Executive Watch — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:41:00 GMT

In order to bring in a bloc of anti-vaccine voters, Donald Trump promised to appoint an anti-vaccine zealot as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Now, under his supervision, the agency is suppressing information about the efficacy of vaccines in order to prevent embarrassing the administration in advance of the midterm congressional elections.

The Washington Post has the inside information:

A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter.
The move, which has not been previously reported, has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because it conflicts with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda has received pointed questioning from lawmakers during budget hearings that began last week and conclude Wednesday. …
The report is gaining attention at a delicate political moment: The Trump administration has sought to soften its public posture on controversial vaccine actions ahead of the midterm elections. GOP pollsters have warned of the political risks of vaccine skepticism, and many voters oppose Kennedy’s efforts to roll back vaccine policies. Publishing findings showing the vaccine’s effectiveness would be at odds with the administration’s moves to restrict its use, particularly for children, former CDC officials say.
The report had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, which includes dozens of scientists, according to two of the three people who spoke to The Post. Stopping an MMWR report at that stage is highly unusual, former CDC officials say.

This is the worst form of political corruption, in which vital government programs that are literally a matter of life and death are sabotaged for the political expediency of people in power—and the truth itself is buried to prevent them from having to confront it.

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Trump’s Ballroom Contract Ensures Anonymity to Donors and Prevents Congress From Getting Answers for Conflict of Interest Queries

Executive Watch — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:54:00 GMT

The worst part about Donald Trump’s plan to build a ginormous gilded ballroom is not the ballroom itself, as gaudy and bloated as it is. It’s the fact that it is being built with nearly half a billion dollars that Trump squeezed out of private donors—and the fact that, by the very design of the project, we don’t even get to know who paid these bribes.

However, The Washington Post at least got a hold of the contract that governs the donation scheme:

The Trump administration’s contract governing hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations to build President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom shields donors’ identities, excludes the White House from conflict of interest protections and was disclosed only after a lawsuit and a judge’s order, records obtained by The Washington Post show. …
The contract provisions, taken together, allow wealthy donors with business before the federal government to contribute anonymously to a sitting president’s pet project, while exempting the White House from key conflict of interest safeguards and limiting scrutiny by Congress and the public. …
Charles Tiefer, a retired law professor at the University of Baltimore who spent three years on a congressionally authorized commission scrutinizing wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the anonymity provisions potentially set up the Trump administration to block congressional inquiries into the project’s funding.
“If Congress knocks on the door, the White House is going to slam it shut and say, ‘You’re not allowed to know these donors,’” Tiefer said.

In some respects, the Trump administration’s corruption is all being done out in the open. We know that rich people and big corporations are giving millions to feed his vanity. But the details are all kept completely in the dark. We know that favors are being traded, but what those favors are and who gets them is not for us plebeians to know.

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Trump Sues His Own IRS for $10 Billion for Leaking His Tax Returns That He Should Have Himself Disclosed

Executive Watch — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:13:00 GMT

Donald Trump has filed multiple personal lawsuits against the U.S. government seeking massive payouts for supposed damages—from a government whose lawyers take orders from him. The biggest of these suits would be easy for the government to fight, unless it chooses to settle it with a massive payout of your tax dollars to Trump and his family.

It looks like this is exactly what Trump’s minions are planning to do.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal agencies are engaging in discussions to resolve a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump and his family over the leak of their tax information to news organizations, according to new federal court filings. …
The lawsuit, when it was filed, sought at least $10 billion in damages, claiming that the federal government did not properly safeguard the tax returns “from unauthorized inspection and public disclosure.” Trump is suing the government in a personal capacity, not as president. …
Along with the January lawsuit targeting the IRS, Trump has engaged in other legal efforts to claim a large amount of money against the government he oversees. He previously sought damages over the Justice Department’s investigations into the connection between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign, and pursued a case over the FBI’s 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago property over alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Earlier this week, Democratic lawmakers announced plans to introduce legislation that would, among other guardrails, bar sitting presidents and vice presidents from collecting settlement payments from the United States. The bill, called the Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act, would also prohibit spouses, children, any trust “that exists for their benefit” or any “entity they own or control” from collecting damages payments through settlements with the federal government.

Filing a lawsuit as a personal plaintiff, then ordering its settlement from a defendant in Trump’s official control, is just a quasi-legal way of looting the U.S. Treasury for the benefit of America’s ruling family. What makes it possible is Trump’s gutting of any independence in the Justice Department and other federal agencies—and the compliance (so far) of Congress.

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A Crony Is Selling Meetings to Businessmen With Trump In Exchange for $500,000 to MAGA PACs and Backing His Offer With Threats

Executive Watch — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:57:00 GMT

No administration in history has ever sold influence for cash so openly, so blatantly, and at such a scale as this one. In the latest example, a well-connected conservative influence-peddler has been openly selling one-on-one meetings with Donald Trump in exchange for $500,000 contributions to his favorite rightwing PACs—and warning businessmen that they had better get themselves “aligned” with Trump, or else.

Popular Information has the story:

An email sent by Sinan Kanatsiz, an obscure but well-connected figure in Trump’s political orbit, offers its recipients a “one-on-one meeting and private photo with President Donald Trump” in exchange for a “contribution of $500,000 to TPUSA PAC.”
Kanatsiz describes his invitation as “strictly confidential and non-transferable.” The bottom of the message warns, “NOT FOR SHARING—CONFIDENTIAL.” The email was obtained by Popular Information from a source who received it. The source shared the email on the condition of anonymity, fearing professional consequences for providing information to a journalist. …
Kanatsiz warned business owners to “align” with Trump or suffer the consequences. “Donald Trump is a businessman and any business owner who doesn’t want to align with this administration will be left in the dark,” Kanatsiz told the [Orange County Business Journal].

Meetings and access to top officials have always been dangled as a reward for large donors, but rarely is this offered with such a direct, explicit, and vast price tag—or accompanied by such a direct threat. Yet this is how our system works now.

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Trump Openly Muses Mass Pardons for Henchmen Who Commit Crimes for Him

Executive Watch — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:16:00 GMT

The pardon power was created to grant clemency for the deserving—the unjustly prosecuted or those who have made restitution for their crimes through some other service to the country. Trump is instead using it to grant unlimited immunity to his supporters, and he is now promising to issue mass pardons to henchmen who break the law to do his bidding.

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop:

President Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments.
“I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump said in a recent meeting to laughs, according to people with knowledge of the comments. That radius appears to be expanding as the president repeats the line. Another person who met with Trump earlier this year said the president quipped about pardoning anyone who had come within 10 feet.
In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office, some of the people said. The people said they weren’t aware of specific pardons being offered to specific people for specific acts. …
The president has repeatedly raised the specter of pardons with White House aides and other administration officials, particularly when staff have suggested they could face prosecution or congressional investigations over decisions, people familiar with the comments said. Trump is known to joke about matters that he later seriously pursues, and the frequent references have led some aides to believe he is serious about the pardons, too.

As the Journal puts it, “The unconditional power to pardon is one of the most sweeping powers offered to the presidency.” But it is clearly an abuse incompatible with a free society to exempt the entire executive branch and the president’s own political movement from the rule of law.

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Foreign Steel Maker Gets Tariff Breaks In Exchange for Free Steel for the Trump Ballroom

Executive Watch — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:21:00 GMT

Donald Trump’s massive White House ballroom has become a nexus of corruption before it even gets built. The latest news is that a foreign company offered to donate its steel for the ballroom—so much for “made in America”—and then promptly got a special break on Trump’s tariffs.

The New York Times reports:

President Trump has championed the U.S. steel industry, promising to strengthen it and to impose stiff tariffs on foreign metals to shield manufacturers from overseas competitors.
Yet…ArcelorMittal, a Luxembourg-based firm that is the world’s second-largest steel maker, is providing steel for the structure of the ballroom project, the people said. They said the steel was produced in Europe, where the bulk of ArcelorMittal’s production is concentrated.
The White House has not disclosed details of the donation, but Mr. Trump said last October that he had been offered a donation of steel for the ballroom valued at $37 million.
The president’s comments came just days before the White House made adjustments to its tariffs that could benefit ArcelorMittal, by cutting in half the tariffs applied to exports of automotive steel from its Canadian plant.

Note that Trump could grant this favor because he claims the sole, arbitrary power to set and alter tariff rates, including for specific countries and industries. But it’s fitting, in a way, that his ballroom’s entire construction process offers a preview of the kind of corrupt deals that will be made there—if it ever gets built.

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DOJ Seeks to Divert the Settlement in a Predatory Lending Case From Hispanic Victims to ICE to Target Them

Executive Watch — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:04:00 GMT

Donald Trump has been eager to scrape together sources of funding that do not require him to ask the permission of Congress. Here is a novel one: Using settlements from unrelated Justice Department cases to divert money from restitution to victims and use it for Trump’s policy priorities. That’s exactly what his DOJ is doing in a case in Texas.

ProPublica has the story:

In December 2023, the U.S. Justice Department sued a Texas land developer it accused of duping tens of thousands of Hispanic residents into predatory mortgages, a landmark case for the Biden administration. …
Three years later, the Trump administration and Colony Ridge are on the verge of resolving the case. But the $68 million proposed settlement provides no money for victims of the alleged scheme. Instead, it sets aside $20 million for policing and immigration enforcement — a provision that may be used to target the very people who were victimized by the developer, according to former government officials who worked on such cases.
“I’ve never seen a settlement like this, with a complete misalignment between what you’re settling and what the resolution is,” said Elena Babinecz, who led fair lending investigations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 12 years under the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, before leaving in October. …
As federal investigators built a case around how Colony Ridge had treated its largely immigrant customers, conservative media and politicians aligned with Trump—who had made immigration enforcement a cornerstone of his campaign—did not focus on how consumers had been harmed. They instead accused the development of being a haven for immigrants.
They claimed, without providing evidence, that the development was a base for Mexican drug cartels and a “no-go” zone for police. Local law enforcement disputed the assertions, saying that violent crime there was no different from other neighborhoods in and around Houston. State legislative panels convened to investigate the allegations also fizzled out after they were unable to substantiate such claims.

This is an attempt to harness the legal resources of the Department of Justice to shake down defendants for money for Trump’s political projects. Fortunately, the case will soon go before a judge who will have the ability to block the settlement—but not every judge is going to step up to prevent these abuses.

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The Administration Threatened the Pope With Dire Consequences if He Didn't Back Off His Criticism of Trump's Wars

Executive Watch — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:04:00 GMT

The Trump administration’s professions of religious piety have always been repeated with greater vehemence than credibility, but it is still shocking to see a new report claiming that in January, top officials at the Pentagon attempted to strong-arm Pope Leo XIV for refusing to lend his moral authority to Trump’s wars.

The normally Trump-friendly outlet The Free Press couldn’t pass up the scoop, but if you don’t want to cross their paywall, The New Republic has a summary:

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.
“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France. …
The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

As appalling as this is, it is also somewhat comical, and not just for the hypocrisy given the administration’s loud appeals to Christian traditionalism. It raises the Trump administration’s attempts to persecute and intimidate his critics to the level of insane hubris, targeting an institution so large and powerful that it has humbled kings centuries before Trump came along.

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Trump Threatens CNN for Allegedly Fake Reporting About His Iran Cave-In

Executive Watch — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:06:00 GMT

Trump and his loyalist FCC Chairman Brendan Carr keep threatening to abuse their power to punish Trump’s political enemies. They just did it again, threatening CNN for posting “fake news”—when it was simply reporting a real announcement from the Iranian regime that contradicted Trump’s claims.

Deadline reports:

About 90 minutes after announcing a two-week ceasefire in the war in Iran, Donald Trump was irate over CNN’s reporting of a statement issued by the country’s Supreme National Security Council, declaring victory and averting the president’s threat to launch attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Trump posted on Truth Social at 8:01 p.m. ET, “The alleged Statement put out by CNN World News is a FRAUD, as CNN well knows. The false Statement was linked to a Fake News site (from Nigeria) and, of course, immediately picked up by CNN, and blared out as a ‘legitimate’ headline. The Official Statement by Iran was just released, and posted on TRUTH, below. Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of the Fake CNN World Statement, or was it a sick rogue player? CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’ Results of the investigation will be announced in the near future.” …
CNN is defending its reporting on the statement. A spokesperson said, “The statement in question was obtained by CNN from Iranian officials and reported on multiple Iranian state media outlets. We received the statement from specific official Iranian spokespeople who are known to us.” …
Other outlets, including The New York Times and PBS, reported on a statement similar to the one that CNN did. …
Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, also weighed in on Trump’s post attacking CNN.
Carr wrote, “More outrageous conduct from CNN. Fake news is bad enough for the country, but pushing out a hoax headline in such a sensitive national security moment as this requires accountability. Iran put out an official statement that simply cannot be squared with the one CNN’s false headline attributes to them. Time for change at CNN.”
The Justice Department is currently reviewing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.

Carr has no direct authority over CNN, because it broadcasts on cable TV, not over the airwaves. But Trump has a history of abusing the extensive powers of the executive branch, including using antitrust regulations to block planned mergers, to shake down media companies and intimidate them into providing friendlier coverage.

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The President Uses the Threat of War Crimes Against Iran as a Negotiating Tactic

Executive Watch — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 17:13:00 GMT

Donald Trump has raised, then dropped, multiple different strategic objectives for his war against Iran. But he has been consistent about America’s tactics. He has repeatedly announced a contempt for international law and a fascination with indiscriminate destruction that crosses the line to war crimes.

The New York Times reports on his latest threats:

Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people—and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law.
Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” as he put it in a speech on Wednesday. …
International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those. So does pillaging a country, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do by taking Iran’s oil. …
During a standoff with Iran in his first administration, Mr. Trump threatened to destroy 52 cultural sites in the country. Mark T. Esper, then the defense secretary, acknowledged that hitting such sites would be a war crime and said the Pentagon would not do it.
The second Trump administration has taken a different approach.

Then he went further, posting: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” basically a warning that he is prepared to use nukes to commit genocide on a mass scale to try to win an illegal war with no clear purpose.

Basically, what this suggests is that unless something stops him, there is no limit to the cruelty he will unleash to get his way.

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The DOJ Declares the Presidential Records Act Unconstitutional to Give Trump Cover to Destroy Evidence of Presidential Corruption and Illegality

Executive Watch — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Donald Trump’s theory of presidential power is that it is a grant of absolute authority vested in one man, answerable to no other institution. It isn’t even subject to questioning or scrutiny, which is why his Justice Department has now declared the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional—laying the legal groundwork to destroy records of his presidency and refuse to hand them over when he leaves office.

Politico reports:

The Trump administration’s abrupt declaration that the federal law governing presidential records for the past 48 years is unconstitutional is creating confusion about access to records of past presidencies, including documents that are on the verge of public release.
The Wednesday memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which challenges the Presidential Records Act, appears intended to give President Donald Trump the legal leeway to destroy White House records from his current term. It also gives him legal backing to refuse to hand over any remaining records to the National Archives and Records Administration when he leaves office in 2029. …
[T]he Archives received more than 200 requests for White House records from Trump’s first term after the legal window for such requests opened on Jan. 20. The future of those requests now appears to be up in the air.
Kelly McClanahan, a lawyer pursuing several lawsuits seeking copies of records Trump took to Mar-a-Lago during his first term and the White House’s handling of several national security-related controversies, said he was incensed by the new opinion and fears the administration could begin to destroy records at any time.

To be sure, anyone as neck-deep in corruption, abuses of civil rights, and the mass killing of civilians as the Trump administration would certainly want to be able to destroy all official records of their actions. But a free society, which holds its leaders accountable, demands that they be prevented from doing so.

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Trump Issues an Executive Order to Dictate the Rules for College Football and Enforce Them by Cutting Federal Funding

Executive Watch — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:59:00 GMT

Donald Trump views executive orders, not as mere directives for the administration of the government, but as edicts expressing his demands for control over all parts of society, as if he were an absolute monarch entitled to have the final say on everything. That now includes the internal rules of college football.

CBS Sports reports:

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order of “urgent national action to save college sports,” an intervention at the highest level aimed at federally regulating NIL collectives, limiting transfer movement, capping player eligibility, and enacting funding requirements for the Olympics and women’s sports, the White House announced Friday.
Trump’s recommendation includes strict guardrails on player transfers and even mentions the return of the NCAA’s “one-time” transfer rule, with an exception for grad transfers. …
Trump’s order includes a provision to review federal government grants and contracts for schools and potentially cut funding if they fail to comply with NCAA rules, according to the fact sheet released by The White House. …
Many of those in attendance at Trump’s gathering last month favored the SCORE Act, first introduced in July 2025 by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Backed by the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, the SCORE Act aims at regulating payments made to collegiate athletes, but has not passed.

This is another attempt by Trump to weaponize federal funding to impose his edicts on universities. And note that this is not just a grab for direct presidential control over NCAA rules. It is also an attempt to use executive decrees to bypass Congress entirely.

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Hegseth Blocks Merit-Based Promotion of Women and Minority Servicemembers and Fires Decorated Generals For Insufficient Loyalty

Executive Watch — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:48:00 GMT

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has begun an unprecedented intervention in the promotion system in the U.S. military, blocking candidates with excellent records recommended by promotion boards. His overall pattern is to block promotion of women and minorities—but also to purge officers with suspect political loyalties.

NBC News reports:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender, or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.
The process within the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines is structured to ensure the most qualified officers get promoted. Hegseth’s decision to intervene in the process has raised concerns among some officials within those military branches and the White House, the nine U.S. officials familiar with the situation said. …
On Thursday Hegseth fired the Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, whose term was expected to be four years ending in September 2027. George, the Army’s top officer, was senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden administration.
By law the president has the most authority to block a military promotion, either an individual recommendation or a name on a list. If a recommended promotion is pulled before it is transmitted to the White House, a reason must be provided, such as an ongoing investigation or an allegation about an officer’s conduct, and the defense secretary typically does not make those decisions. Candidates for promotion have been removed in the past if there were allegations against them or military investigations into them. The people removed from promotion lists did not have open investigations against them, U.S. officials said.

When we connect this with the administration’s ongoing commission of war crimes, its threats to commit more war crimes, and Donald Trump’s repeated threat to deploy troops to suppress political protest at home, this suggests the kind of political purge of the military necessary for a dictator to ensure unquestioned obedience and consolidate absolute power.

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The White House Let Kristi Noem's Corruption Slide For Over a Year Before Allowing an Investigation

Executive Watch — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:11:00 GMT

One of the hallmarks of the Trump administration is its open and spectacular political corruption—often conducted under protection from the very top. But now that Kristi Noem has taken the fall for the bad press from executing Trump’s policies at the Department of Homeland Security, investigators are beginning to dig into the corruption there.

The New York Times has an overview:

The focus of the investigation by the inspector general, Joseph V. Cuffari, who was nominated to his post by President Trump in his first term, reflects the widening fallout from Ms. Noem’s rocky tenure. Mr. Trump abruptly fired her last month amid criticisms of an expensive advertising campaign that prominently featured her. The inquiry deepens the questions about the latitude she granted to Mr. Lewandowski, a special adviser who was not an official government employee and was supposed to serve in a limited capacity. …
Mr. Cuffari, who was confirmed to his position in 2019, is one of the few remaining inspectors general after Mr. Trump fired or demoted many of them in his second term.
Mr. Cuffari clashed with Ms. Noem when she was leading the department, and he told Congress earlier this year that D.H.S. officials had blocked him from accessing critical information and databases needed for his investigations. Ms. Noem said at the time that Mr. Cuffari was seeking overly broad access to department information. …
The inspector general’s inquiry is intensifying the spotlight on the tight grip that Ms. Noem and Mr. Lewandowski had on contracts inside the agency, and the concerns among homeland security officials that Mr. Lewandowski was trying to enrich himself through his role, as The Times previously reported.

The question is why this investigation is only happening now. After more than a year of persistent reports of corruption at DHS, it seems the few remaining inspectors general are only permitted to do their job once the president has stopped running interference for one of his loyalists.

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Trump Threatens to Withdraw from NATO, an Illegal Act Without Congressional Approval

Executive Watch — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:09:00 GMT

Donald Trump likes to go around claiming the power to rule by his personal whim, asserting authority the president simply does not possess under the U.S. Constitution. He has already started a war without approval from Congress, and this has emboldened him to talk about withdrawing from NATO—and its underlying treaty—also without approval from Congress. But this is expressly illegal.

CNN reports:

Trump told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in an interview published Wednesday that he would reconsider the US’ NATO membership. He later doubled down, telling Reuters he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance. …
Yet despite Trump’s claims that he can withdraw the United States from the alliance, a law passed by Congress in 2023 says the move would require the advice and consent of the Senate, with two-thirds of senators in agreement, or an act of Congress. …
The requirement for congressional approval means that even if all Republicans voted with Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO, it would require several Democrats—at least 14 if all Republicans are present—to join them to pass the legislation.
That’s unlikely to happen, as Sen. Thom Tillis, the top Republican on the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, has warned against damaging the military alliance.
Tillis said in a March interview with ABC’s “This Week” that it is “factually not true” that Trump can pull out of NATO without Congress.

The 2023 law is redundant. NATO was formed by the North Atlantic Treaty, and under the Constitution, treaties are made with the approval of Congress and then become the law of the land—which implies that a treaty cannot be dissolved without the approval of Congress, either.

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Trump Issues an Unconstitutional Executive Order Asserting Control over Voting Lists and Mail-In Ballots

Executive Watch — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:55:00 GMT

Donald Trump is desperate to disrupt this year’s midterm congressional elections, which are almost certain to wipe out his party’s majority in Congress and lead to increased congressional resistance to his agenda. He has already attempted once to exert direct presidential control over the election process, and now he’s making another try.

A British newspaper, The Guardian, is somehow far more forthright about how this contradicts the U.S. Constitution than most American outlets:

Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to compile a national voter file and to restrict the use of mail-in ballots, an unprecedented move that is probably unconstitutional.
The executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to compile a list of verified US citizens who can vote in every state. It also directs the United States Postal Service (USPS) to begin rule-making on a process that would require states to notify the agency of voters who intend to receive a mail-in ballot and prohibit them from receiving one unless they are on a USPS-approved list of eligible voters.
Trump repeated a series of falsehoods about voting before signing the order in the Oval Office on Tuesday. …
“There’s not a single provision in here that will withstand judicial review. This is a wholly unconstitutional EO,” said David Becker, the executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a non-profit.
The US constitution gives the president no authority over elections and expressly authorizes states to set election rules.

The Constitution’s dispersal of voting administration to the states is intended to prevent exactly what Trump is trying to do. But the goal of this executive order is not just to get away with a presidential takeover of the process. It is also laying the groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of any vote that doesn’t follow Trump’s rules—and to try to overturn it.

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