The Administration Undermines the Military’s Procedures for Merit-Based Promotions and Traditions of Nonpartisanship: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our early-April selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
We launched Executive Watch, a real-time tracker of presidential abuses of power, early in Trump’s second term. Since that time, it has been meticulously documenting the illicit actions emanating from the White House.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. You should bookmark this page that contains a chronological scroll of the abuses and this post that sorts and lists them under our 5 P categories:
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?
April 8, 2026
The Administration Threatened the Pope With Dire Consequences if He Didn’t Back Off His Criticism of Trump’s Wars
Category: Presidential Retribution
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.
April 7, 2026
Trump Threatens CNN for Allegedly Fake Reporting About His Iran Cave-In
Category: Presidential Retribution
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.
April 5, 2026
The President Uses the Threat of War Crimes Against Iran as a Negotiating Tactic
Category: Policy Illegality
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.
April 4, 2026
The DOJ Declares the Presidential Records Act Unconstitutional to Give Trump Cover to Destroy Evidence of Presidential Corruption and Illegality
Category: Political Corruption
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.
April 3, 2026
Trump Issues an Executive Order to Dictate the Rules for College Football and Enforce Them by Cutting Federal Funding
Category: Policy Illegality
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.
April 2, 2026
Hegseth Blocks Merit-Based Promotion of Women and Minority Servicemembers and Fires Decorated Generals For Insufficient Loyalty
Category: Power Consolidation
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.
April 1, 2026
The White House Let Kristi Noem’s Corruption Slide For Over a Year Before Allowing an Investigation
Category: Personal Grift
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.
April 1, 2026
Trump Threatens to Withdraw from NATO, an Illegal Act Without Congressional Approval
Category: Policy Illegality
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.
March 31, 2026
Trump Issues an Unconstitutional Executive Order Asserting Control over Voting Lists and Mail-In Ballots
Category: Power Consolidation
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.
March 31, 2026
Hegseth Stops Investigation of Apache Pilots Who Conducted Unscheduled Flybys Over Kid Rock’s House During No Kings Protests
Category: Power Consolidation
Is the U.S. military intended to be used to protect American citizens and secure our national interests—or is it available as an extremely expensive way to provide free publicity for politically connected celebrities? The Trump administration is treating it as the latter, in the case of a helicopter flyby used to create social media content for a pro-Trump, has-been celebrity.
The Washington Post reports:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday nullified an Army investigation into the unauthorized helicopter flybys of musician Kid Rock’s estate and anti-Trump protests in Tennessee over the weekend, announcing the move just hours after military officials opened their disciplinary review of the soldiers involved.
“No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, Patriots,” Hegseth wrote on social media.
Kid Rock, whose legal name is Robert Ritchie, is an enthusiastic, longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, and he is widely admired among the president’s political base. Hegseth’s swift intervention in the case raised immediate questions about whether the military can hold its own accountable for actions that Hegseth may deem politically favorable. …
Earlier Tuesday, Army officials had said the Apache pilots were suspended while officials investigated the incident.
“The Army takes any allegations of unauthorized or unsafe flight operations very seriously and is committed to enforcing standards and holding personnel accountable,” it said in a statement.
This is another example of Pete Hegseth turning the U.S. military into a political instrument by sabotaging its internal institutions and overruling the decisions of independent and nonpartisan boards.
March 30, 2026
Stephen Miller Ordered ICE to Provoke Violent Confrontations With Minneapolis Protesters that Led to the Execution of Two Americans
Category: Policy Illegality
The killings of observers at immigration raids in Minneapolis early this year were no accident. We now have confirmation from insiders at the Department of Homeland Security that this was the result of a deliberate policy out of the White House to initiate violent confrontations in order to deny opponents of mass deportations the appearance of a public relations victory.
The Daily Mail has the scoop behind a paywall, but it is summarized by The New Republic:
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrageous order to immigration officials may have sparked the confrontation that killed an American citizen.
During one of his many furious morning calls with immigration enforcement officials, Miller demanded that federal agents be dispatched to certain areas of Minneapolis in order to “force confrontations” with anti-ICE protesters, two senior DHS sources told the Daily Mail.
Miller repeatedly urged federal agents to engage with protesters in order to win a “PR battle,” one official told the outlet.
He told officials that anti-ICE could not be viewed as successful, and repeatedly said that demonstrators “need to be vanquished by any force necessary,” another DHS source told the Mail.
Miller is the architect and instigator of Donald Trump’s militarized mass deportation policy, and he is the one person who has not been thrown under the bus by Trump and still retains his full backing. But he is responsible for the policy that triggered the murder of bystanders for exercising their First Amendment right to observe their government.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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With regard to military appointments, I suspect what the administration has done is to make ineligible anyone who was on the “quota” track from higher appointments. This track has been enlarged and prioritized by both the Obama and Biden administrations. Truly worthy individuals regardless of their group memberships should be considered. If Trump has done more than this ie if women and minorities are excluded entirely, then that is dead wrong.