Executive Watch

Tracking presidential abuses of power

The Executive Watch is a tracker of presidential abuses of power that we at The UnPopulist, and our parent organization the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), designed in order to provide a one-stop, comprehensive, easily searchable database that anyone can click on to see the full picture of Trump’s illicit actions in office.

To go directly to Executive Watch, click here.

We've divided presidential abuses of power into five categories: the 5 Ps.

• Personal Grift

• Political Corruption

• Presidential Retribution

• Power Consolidation

• Policy Illegality

This post will serve as a continually updated repository of all our Executive Watch entries, sorted by presidential abuse category.

• 3/13/25: A Chinese Scammer Is Seeking a Pardon from Trump in Exchange of Investing in His Crypto Fund

• 3/11/25: Trump Uses the White House to Make a Sales Pitch for Tesla in Exchange for Campaign Cash from Musk

• 3/2/25: Trump Uses Sovereign Crypto Fund as a Payout to Political Insiders

• 2/27/25: Cryptocurrency Scammer Pours Millions in Trump's Venture and Gets Charges Dropped

• 2/25/25: Musk Lands a Lucrative FAA Contract While Saying He's Stopping Government Abuse

• 2/19/25: Musk Uses His Political Power to Force Companies to Advertise on X

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• 4/17/25: Treasury Official Ask IRS to Rethink Audits of the Pillow Guy and Trump's Other 'High Profile Friends'

• 3/28/25: The White House Fires a Federal Prosecutor Who Criticized Trump and Was Prosecuting a Trump-Supporting, Tax-Defrauding CEO

• 3/20/25: Trump Announces Shakedown Deal with Big Law Firm

• 2/17/25: Trump Abuses His Foreign Policy Powers as a Favor to ‘Manosphere’ Influencer Andrew Tate

• 2/11/25: Trump’s Pardon-for-Deportation Crackdown Deal with NYC Mayor Eric Adams

• 2/10/25: Surprise! The Most Ethically Challenged Administration Guts the Government Ethics Agency

• 2/10/25: Trump Gives the Green Light to American Companies to Engage in Corruption Abroad

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• 4/18/25: Trump Administration's Campaign of Retribution Threatens Scientific Journals Not on Board with MAGA Science

• 4/16/25: Trump Threatens to Nix Harvard's Tax-Exempt Status if it Fails to Embrace His Ideological Agenda

• 4/15/25: Trump's Counterterrorism Czar Wants to Prosecute Critics of Mass Deportation for ‘Aiding and Abetting’ Terrorists

• 4/14/25: Trump Wants the FCC to Revoke CBS' Broadcast License for Running Stories Critical of Him

• 4/11/25: Trump Orders Harvard to Implement Viewpoint Diversity or Else!

• 4/9/25: Trump's Executive Orders Target His Own Former Aides for Challenging His ‘Stolen Election’ Conspiracy Theories

• 3/25/25: Trump Targets Another Law Firm Offering Services to His Opponents, Eviscerating the Principle of Effective Representation for All

• 3/24/25: Trump Toady Briefly Canceled a Program Handing Social Security Numbers to Newborns in a Hospital to Spite Maine’s Governor

• 3/22/25: A Trump Memo Threatens Any Lawyer Who Dares to Sue His Illegal Executive Actions

• 3/15/25: Trump Announces that Negative Coverage of Him Is Illegal and Threatens Networks

• 3/8/25: Trump Revokes the Green Card of a Pro-Palestinian Campus Activist Without Any Criminal Charges

• 3/6/25: Trump Goes After a Law Firm Just Because it Has Represented Democrats

• 2/25/25: Trump Targets the Law Firm Representing the Special Counsel Who Investigated Him

• 2/21/25: Trump DOJ Threatens Opposition Lawmakers for their Speech

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• 4/19/25: Trump’s FCC Head Threatens to Revoke Comcast's Licenses Over Unfavorable Coverage of Abrego Garcia's Deportation to Salvadoran Gulag

• 4/16/25: Trump Alters His 'Deal' with BigLaw and Wants to Extort Legal Services for Himself and His Allies

• 3/30/25: Trump Is Stacking the Press Pool With Loyalists and Crushing the Independence of the White House Press Corps

• 3/25/25: Trump's Unconstitutional Executive Order Tries to Usurp State Control Over Election Law

• 3/17/25: The Trump Administration Forcibly Enters and Seizes Congressionally Funded Non-Profit

• 2/21/25: Trump Tells DHS to Spend Millions on Political Ads Thanking Him for Closing the Border

• 2/18/25: Trump Guts the Independence of Key Federal Agencies, Paving the Way to their Politicization

• 2/17/25: King Trump to America: I Am Beyond the Law

• 1/27/25: Trump Fires Watchdogs Who Track Public Corruption While Claiming He's Fighting 'Waste, Fraud, and Abuse'

• 1/17/25: Trump Uses the Threat of FCC Action to Intimidate and Shake Down CBS

• 1/16/25: Trump Aide Dictated Terms of Facebook Overhaul

• 1/15/25: Trump Browbeats Congressional Republicans to Appoint Loyalists on Committee Assignments

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• 4/21/25: Trump's Unlawful Campaign to Revoke Visas of International Students for Minor Offenses Is Designed to Spread Fear

• 4/14/25: Trump Threatens to Send U.S. Citizens to El Salvador's Gulag

• 4/13/25: The Trump Administration Is Openly Defying the Supreme Court's Order to Bring Home Abrego Garcia After Erroneously Deporting Him to a Salvadoran Gulag

• 4/10/25: Trump Abuses 'Emergency' Power to Set Tariffs by Autocratic Whim

• 3/20/25: Trump Threatens to Send U.S. Citizens who Protest to the Salvadoran Gulag

• 3/17/25: The Trump Administration Defies Judge Demanding Basic Details about Those it Is Deporting

• 3/15/25: Trump Asserts Illegal Wartime Powers to Deport Immigrants in Defiance of the Court

• 3/5/25: Musk Usurps the Power of the Purse from Congress but Republicans Can Apply for Relief from Funding Cuts

• 2/21/25: Trump Punishes AP for Exercising Its Free Speech Rights

• 2/20/25: Trump Attempts an Illegal and Unconstitutional Takeover of the U.S. Postal Service

• 2/18/25: Trump DOJ Seeks to Claw Back EPA Funding by Launching a Bogus Criminal Investigation

• 2/17/25: Trump's Anti-DEI Inquisition Targets Georgetown, a Private University

• 2/12/25: The Trump Administration Illegally Seizes New York City Funds

• 1/28/25: Trump Withholds Congressionally Mandated Spending in Defiance of the Constitution

• 1/20/25: Trump Defies the Law to Keep TikTok Alive

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Articles

• Trump Is Going After the Independence of the Entire Legal Profession, Not Just Big Law by

  Walter Olson
  (3/26/25)

Podcasts

• Trump Wants to Deny Legal Representation to Opponents He Targets
  Host:

  Robert Tracinski
  . Featured Guest:
  Walter Olson
  (4/2/25)

Videos

• Abuse of the Week: Trump is Crushing the Independence of the White House Press Corps by

  Landry Ayres
  (4/16/25)

• Abuse of the Week: Trump's Crypto Crony Corruption by

  Landry Ayres
  (4/8/25)

• Abuse of the Week: Trump Goes After the Independence of the Entire Legal Profession, Not Just Big Law by

  Landry Ayres
  (4/1/25)

• Abuse of the Week: Trump Asserts Illegal Wartime Powers to Deport Migrants in Defiance of the Court by

  Landry Ayres
  (3/24/25)

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