The Administration Attempts to Erase Memory of Jan. 6 by Purging Thousands of Pages from Government Website: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our early-June selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), the parent organization of The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch early in Trump’s second term. It has been meticulously documenting this White House’s illicit actions since then.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries. Bookmark this page, which contains a chronological scroll of the abuses. And also this post, which sorts and lists them under our 5 “P” categories:
After reading the following entries, tell us: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?
June 4, 2026
Trump Is Trying to Discredit California’s Primary Results Without a Shred of Evidence Because Some Republicans Might Not Make it Into the General Elections
Category: Political Corruption
Donald Trump’s obsession with election conspiracy theories has found a new target: California’s primaries. In a Fox News interview and a series of deranged Truth Social posts, he has baselessly claimed that Democrats are stealing elections in various primary contests through mail-in ballot fraud. He writes: “The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”
Trump’s target on this occasion was California’s primary elections—but make no mistake, he and his allies actively seek to cast doubt on any election anywhere that isn’t likely to vote for him or his chosen candidates.
ABC News reports:
President Donald Trump posted to social media late Wednesday night accusing the Democratic Party in California of trying to “steal” the California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral primaries, offering no evidence to support the allegation.
In his posts, Trump complained about the alleged misuse of mail-in ballots and also accused the Democratic Party of delaying the tallying of votes—claims for which there is currently no supporting evidence.
The president also claimed that the votes are “under investigation” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.
No reasonable person believes, as Trump recently claimed, that he would have won in California if Jesus Christ had counted the votes (although perhaps he is still confusing himself with Jesus?).
June 3, 2026
In a Cynical Move, Trump Invokes Forced Labor Concerns as a Pretext to Revive His Tariff Regime After Courts Have Repeatedly Struck It Down
Category: Policy Illegality
Courts have struck down Donald Trump’s tariff regime on a number of occasions, including the Supreme Court itself, which ruled earlier this year that his primary tariffing authority, IEEPA, does not grant the president the power to impose tariffs. Every legal theory he has tried has been rejected. Undeterred, the president has found a new pretext: forced labor. The administration is now imposing across-the-board tariffs of 10–12.5% on countries it claims are failing to enforce anti-forced-labor provisions. Forced labor is a legitimate issue, of course, but unilateral tariffs imposed, without any global cooperation, by an imperialist authoritarian that cares not a whit about human rights doesn’t pass the laugh test. So trade experts are rightly calling out the administration’s bogus framing.
The New York Times reports:
The new tariffs will be imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a law that allows the president to issue tariffs to respond to other countries’ trade practices. Legal experts said they are likely to be more durable than the initial law Mr. Trump used to enact tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Mr. Trump used Section 301 in his first term to wage a trade war with China, and the tariffs he put in place have survived multiple court challenges. No administration, however, has ever used the provision in such a sweeping way.
Trade experts have welcomed efforts to end or reduce forced labor, but some have complained that the new tariffs are primarily aimed at finding a way to block foreign products and raise revenue, not ending human rights abuses.
As the Times notes, Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations called the announcement a “transparently cynical effort” and “merely a pretext to maintain tariffs that the administration believes have been effective.” The forced labor framing may be new, but the underlying impulse to use tariffs baselessly and illicitly is not.
June 2, 2026
Trump Hands the Keys to National Intelligence to a Real Estate Loyalist With Zero Qualifications Except Digging Up Dirt on Trump’s Enemies
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump wasted no time finding a replacement to the director of national intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard resigned. As with Gabbard, Trump's criteria for the job are not any actual experience or qualifications, but slavish personal loyalty and a willingness to go after his enemies. So he picked Bill Pulte, formerly the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a man arguably even less qualified than his predecessor.
Pulte’s main claim to fame is that he feverishly rummaged through the mortgage records of Trump’s political enemies so that the administration could target them. Pulte proved himself useful in one of Trump’s most important initiatives: retaliating against critics and those who have tried to hold him accountable—people like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
NBC News reports:
As acting director of national intelligence, Pulte will be the highest-ranking intelligence official, overseeing a vast network of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency. He will also be the president’s principal adviser on intelligence issues and will manage the daily intelligence briefing for the president.
Trump announced on social media that Pulte will remain as director of the housing finance agency, as well as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress to support the mortgage market. …
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, slammed the decision, saying in a statement that Pulte was not only unqualified, but that he was chosen “precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need,” Warner said.
The job falls to Pulte to inform the most powerful person in the world what is actually true about the world. Trump has handed this role to someone whose most notable professional achievement is finding dirt in mortgage filings. The intelligence community’s animating purpose—providing the president with accurate info regardless of whether he wants to hear it—has just been placed under the supervision of a man selected precisely because he will not do that.
May 29, 2026
In its Bid to Rewrite the History of the Capitol Attack, Trump’s DOJ Erases Thousands of Pages of Jan. 6 Materials from Its Website
Category: Political Corruption
For this president, rewriting the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection has been a sustained project: pardoning the rioters, carving out billions of tax dollars to provide them reparations for participating in a coup, and framing a violent assault on the Capitol as some sort of legitimate political protest. Now his Justice Department has moved to the next phase: deleting the official record.
Lawfare, which has thankfully archived the majority of the deleted materials, explains:
Last week, the Justice Department began systematically removing material from its web sites regarding the many indictments and convictions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The operation started without fanfare or formal announcement and proceeded largely unnoticed. Until, that is, journalists such as the Washington Post’s Meryl Kornfield took notice of certain press releases and other materials that had conspicuously disappeared from www.justice.gov.
“The Trump admin is quietly deleting info about the Capitol attack from the DOJ website as it prepares to give funds to J6ers,” Kornfield posted. “This week, DOJ deleted a press release about one man with an ongoing child solicitation case who came to the Capitol with bear spray.”
Then, with typical bombast, the Justice Department responded by taking issue with one particular aspect of Kornfield’s characterization. “Nothing ’quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response account replied. “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
We are not erasing history quietly, the Justice Department seemed to suggest. We are erasing history loudly and proudly.
For Trump, it’s not enough to pardon those who engaged in political violence on his behalf, or even to reward them financially. He needs to erase the very idea that what they did was wrong from the official record. And his Department of Justice—the federal government’s top law enforcement agency—appears all too happy to comply.
May 29, 2026
Trump Is Screening Troops by Weight and Appearance to Serve as Photogenic Backdrop at His White House UFC Event
Category: Power Consolidation
The Pentagon is recruiting hundreds of uniformed servicemembers to fill seats at—please bear in mind that this is still a very weird sentence to type out—Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) June 14 event on the White House’s South Lawn to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 80th birthday. A cage-fighting arena is being installed on the lawn. And because there are no limits to this administration’s performativity, it only wants in attendance those who meet Trump’s physique standards and will, according to internal guidance, “look good on camera.” Troops selected are required to pay their own travel costs.
The Washington Post reports:
The Pentagon is moving to recruit hundreds of troops to appear as spectators at President Donald Trump’s UFC cage-fighting event at the White House, and requiring those who attend to pay for their travel and meet height and weight requirements, according to people familiar with the matter and internal memos reviewed by The Washington Post.
The Defense Department has solicited volunteers across the services to attend the June 14 event in uniform. Officials are seeking junior enlisted personnel and junior officers specifically, according to internal messages that make clear travel costs will be “member-procured,” meaning neither the Defense Department nor the UFC intends to pay for their arrangements or accommodations.
One memo, circulated within the Air Force, stipulates that to be eligible, personnel “MUST MEET CURRENT WAIST-HEIGHT RATIO and current physical fitness standard.” Commanders were separately directed to distribute tickets to “genuine UFC fans” rather than senior officials.
The Pentagon under this president has a track record of stage-managing Trump’s appearances with troops. For example, at his earlier visit to Fort Bragg, soldiers were handpicked for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. Using the military as a prop for a combat-sports spectacle at the president’s residence, at the troops’ own expense, extends that pattern into the Twilight Zone.
May 28, 2026
Senior White House Adviser and Trump Pal Peter Navarro Pressured the Pentagon Into a $620 Million Contract With a Firm Linked to Donald Trump Jr.
Category: Personal Grift
In yet another instance of self-dealing corruption by this administration, the Pentagon has issued a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet company that the venture capital firm of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, invested in a few months prior. Despite initial denials from the administration, the deal was pushed forward—specifically by Peter Navarro, a Trump senior adviser and friend of the family.
ProPublica has the story:
[I]nterviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.
Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly.
After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said.
“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.
The Trump family’s self-dealing has followed a consistent pattern throughout this administration: a family member acquires a financial interest, the White House exerts pressure on the relevant agency to help produce a personal windfall, and officials scramble to comply. The Vulcan deal is merely the first in which the White House intervention has been documented with this degree of specificity.
May 27, 2026
Trump’s DOJ Opens Retaliatory Criminal Investigation Against E. Jean Carroll, Whose Civil Suits Won $88 Million in Damages Against Him
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the longtime columnist whose two civil suits resulted in an $88 million judgment against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. The probe centers on Reid Hoffman, the billionaire Democratic donor whose nonprofit helped fund Carroll’s legal expenses. It also examines whether Carroll committed perjury in a 2022 deposition when she stated her legal costs were being covered on contingency. Notably, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—who previously represented Trump in the Carroll matters—recused himself from the investigation.
CNN reports:
The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president—one alleging he sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and a second for defaming her when in 2019 he repeatedly denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type, and claimed she made it up to boost book sales. Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses.
Senior leaders at the Justice Department referred the investigation to federal prosecutors in Chicago, according to two sources familiar with the matter. While Carroll’s deposition took place in New York, one of the individuals who helped cover some of Carroll’s legal fees, Hoffman, has a nonprofit based in Chicago. Hoffman’s support of the case caught Trump’s attorneys off guard when it came to light on the eve of trial.
A federal judge had already ruled that evidence of Hoffman’s funding had no bearing on Carroll’s allegations and barred it from being presented to jurors. That ruling didn’t stop the DOJ from opening a probe anyway. Carroll’s civil verdicts, which have survived multiple rounds of federal appeals, represent the legal system’s most direct finding against Trump for his personal conduct. The investigation—targeting his accuser, her funder, and a funding arrangement a federal judge already deemed irrelevant—appears aimed squarely at retribution.
May 27, 2026
Trump’s New DHS Secretary Threatens to Halt International Flight Processing at Blue City Airports as Punishment for Allowing Anti-ICE Protests at Detention Camps
Category: Power Consolidation
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced he is “drawing up plans” to end the processing of international flights at airports in left-leaning cities, citing protests outside an immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey—protests at which Democratic Sen. Andy Kim was pepper-sprayed by officers. The threat arrives just weeks before the FIFA World Cup brings millions of international visitors to the United States.
The Hill reports:
“[T]hese sanctuary cities where the local radical-left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our jobs and enforce federal laws,” Mullin said, “then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either.”
Critics said ending the processing of international flights at various airports would cause chaos at airports across the country, forcing airlines to cancel flights and disrupt travel for left- and right-leaning cities that depend on CBP processing at major hubs.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the idea “actively insane.” “Airlines cannot divert large numbers of international flights from one city to another,” he wrote. “They’d just have to cancel flights en masse, causing enormous economic damage that splashed waaaaay beyond a few big cities that were the target.”
Halting international flight processing at major airports would inflict enormous collateral damage on ordinary travelers, businesses, and the broader economy—none of whom are responsible for the protests Mullin objects to. More fundamentally, using a core governmental service as a weapon against political dissent is precisely the kind of retaliatory executive action that the constitutional design of limited government was meant to prevent. The administration is treating airport customs processing as a bargaining chip to punish cities for harboring residents who protest its policies.
May 26, 2026
Trump’s Unprecedented Government-Wide Gag Order Is Designed to Silence Whistleblowers and Shield His Administration’s Corruption
Category: Power Consolidation
The Trump administration has proposed a government-wide nondisclosure agreement requiring every federal employee to sign a gag order. The move is unprecedented in scope, and conveniently timed to coincide with one of the most corrupt periods in modern presidential history.
The Washington Post explains:
The draft notice uses an expansive definition of privileged information, beyond typical classified and unclassified designations. Under the terms of the draft, employees would be blocked from sharing “non-public, confidential, or proprietary information” or “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available.”
The draft NDA says that signing it is “voluntary,” but there’s a hefty caveat: “Failure to sign may result in removal from federal service and potential debarment for refusal to certify compliance with applicable non-disclosure obligations.” …
“Such broad gag orders would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability,” ACLU’s Esha Bhandari said. “The government can’t shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy.”
Federal law protects whistleblowers precisely to prevent this kind of institutional self-sealing—and this NDA, despite its nominal carve-outs, is designed to make employees too afraid to invoke those protections.
The administration’s stance is clear: let Trump do whatever outrageously corrupt and illegal things he wants, or lose your job.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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J6 will never be lost to history for many reasons, but the greatest of them is going to be how Democrats orchestrated much of it to malign Trump.
There were well over 200 FBI Federal Agents in the crowd. Why?
According to the words of the Chief Of Capitol Police at the time, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House turned down additional reinforcements on J6 even though he urged her to add them. These are his words.
Much of the 'live footage' was conveniently clipped out of context to make it look like a coup when in fact it was just an angry crowd.
Officers actually freely let people INTO the Capitol.
Glen Greenwald has extensively documented how the lies about J6 were orchestrated in concert by left swinging Legacy Media like the NYT and CNN to perpetuate untruths and incite the public against Trump, only to quietly, without fanfare retract those 'mistakes' quietly months later.
A sitting US President, the most powerful man in the world, was censored / banned off of social media.
The entire thing was blown out of proportion by the Democrats in a concerted effort to smear and stop Trump...much like the Covid pandemic was blown out of proportion by the Left in an effort to smear ANYONE opposed to the Lefts unreasonable measures.
In fact, you can even argue that the Covid pandemic was used to keep Trump out of office in several ways, not the least of which by exaggerating how serious it was (which they did) and forcing mail order ballots and lower turnout at the polls.
Sure, there was a mob and it blew out of control quickly, but Democrats absolutely had a hand to play in that debacle. If you had 20,000 people at a concert, it would blow out of control too without enough security detail.
These were ALL attempts at stopping Trump from staying in office, being respected, and getting re-elected, in much the same way that they tried to (unsuccessfully) impeach him twice, and when they couldn't stop him, they began charging him with concocted legal charges that nobody else would be charged or convicted with (inflating real estate values??? Really?)...they literally threw everything including the kitchen sink at him and he still got elected to a 2nd term.
Oh, I forgot the Steele Dossier and the Russian Collusion hoax pushed by Hilary and Obama.
Democrats at this point look like sore losers and incapable of running a proper political party, let alone getting elected. Frankly, they look ridiculous at this point.
Perhaps the history of civilization is, in part, the history of humanity learning to distrust itself. Independent courts, constitutions, and institutions are not signs of weakness. They are tools created by an imperfect species to protect itself from its own recurring temptations.