Executive Watch is our running record of this administration’s abuses of power. Every other week we add a new batch, and this week’s entries are below. You can find the full archive in reverse-chronological order on our Executive Watch page. Bookmark this post, which sorts every entry into our five “P” categories:
Which of this round’s abuses do you find most alarming? Make your case in the comments.
Oct. 28, 2026
Trump Helps a Defeated Brazilian Ally Under Criminal Investigation Flee to the US
Category: Political Corruption
Flávio Bolsonaro is a close Trump ally, the son of Brazil’s former president (now serving a 27-year sentence for a crime near and dear to Trump’s heart: self-coup), and the loser of Brazil’s presidential runoff last weekend. Brazil’s Supreme Court, which is investigating him for money laundering, ordered him to surrender his passports. Instead, he slipped across the border into Argentina and flew to Miami, with considerable help from the Trump administration.
The Associated Press reports:
In a circuitous journey, Bolsonaro left for Argentina on Tuesday with his wife and two daughters, then traveled to Ecuador, according to Argentina officials and flight data. The 45-year-old senator, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, visited the White House in May, and the Trump administration approved U.S. visas for him and his family this week. ... Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation by Brazil’s Supreme Court, accused of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. The court had ordered him to hand over his regular and diplomatic passports by noon Tuesday.
According to The New York Times, a private jet was arranged by White House communications official Jason Miller. Bolsonaro was then let into the country on Trump’s orders under “parole,” a status meant for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” not a shield from criminal prosecution. Even as Haitians and others face deportation after their temporary protected status was stripped, officials expect him to get a fast-tracked green card, like the one his brother Eduardo received in July, shortly after Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted Eduardo in absentia of coercion for lobbying the Trump administration to punish the judges in their father’s coup trial.
Safely on U.S. soil, Flávio declared himself the “leader of Brazil” and claimed, without anything resembling credible evidence, that the election was fraudulent. Trump, who has called the result “rigged,” now declines to say who won. Dozens of countries have recognized the victory of his corrupt, leftist, fiscally profligate opponent, Lula da Silva, because he is the one the Brazilian people picked from two bad options. The United States, led by a president with some experience refusing to accept election results, is not among them.
Oct. 26, 2026
Trump Is Trying to Indict James Comey for a Third Time on Charges as Bogus as the First Two
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against James Comey isn’t over yet. The president has tried to prosecute the former FBI director twice already: once for lying to Congress, a case that was dismissed because the prosecutor who brought it was illegally appointed, and again in April, on charges of threatening the president over an Instagram photo of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
Now, Trump’s Justice Department has accused Comey of leaking classified material, filing what’s known as a criminal “information”—a charging document that circumvents the grand jury, at least for now—to stop the clock on a statute of limitations that was about to run out.
The New York Times explains the latest political prosecution:
Federal prosecutors have brought new charges against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, accusing him of mishandling national security information in October 2016 that they said ended up in a New York Times article, according to court papers unsealed on Monday. ... Mr. Comey is accused of knowingly and willfully causing national defense information to be “communicated, delivered and transmitted to a person not entitled to receive it” around Oct. 4 and 5 of 2016. Court papers in the case point to an Oct. 5 article in The Times describing a novel use of surveillance authority involving Yahoo emails.
Lawyers for Mr. Comey said in court papers that the issue had twice been investigated, including during the first Trump administration, and had not led to charges either time. ... Prosecutors, in court papers, said that the Times article came about because Mr. Comey “sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before.”
The administration’s zeal to get Comey has once again outrun its competence. Prosecutors waited until the eve of a decade-long deadline, then tried to beat it with a filing that may not stop the clock. Comey’s lawyers argue that the 10-year window for national security cases applies only to indictments, and an “information” isn’t one. Even Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, seemed inclined to agree at a hearing on Friday that “indictment” means indictment. He also suggested waiting to see whether the government can get a grand jury to indict Comey at all, since grand juries in Washington keep turning away cases that smack of presidential animus.
Facing that prospect, prosecutors got creative, floating a new theory that the alleged conspiracy ran as late as April 2017—which would, conveniently, give them until next spring to secure an indictment. It’s hard to see this as anything other than a pretext for going after one of Trump’s most outspoken critics.
Comey is already arguing in North Carolina that the “86 47” case is a selective and vindictive prosecution. A case dredged up from files that Trump’s own first-term DOJ closed without charges can only strengthen that argument. As Comey himself aptly put it, “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice.”
Oct. 23, 2026
Trump Interferes in Israel’s Election by Endorsing Netanyahu and Threatening Consequences if ‘Wrong Leader’ Takes Office
Category: Political Corruption
It’s tough to keep up with the Trump administration’s stance on foreign election interference. According to MAGA logic, Russian election meddling is a hoax. But Italy and perhaps even Venezuela may have helped Democrats steal the 2020 election from Trump. Trump’s allies accused the Biden administration of interfering in Romanian elections, but of course it’s fine for JD Vance to support the far-right German AfD. It’s also OK for the U.S. to meddle in Brazilian elections to support Flávio Bolsonaro. It was bad when the EU opposed Orbán, but good when Vance supported Orbán in the Hungarian elections. Now Trump has endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s election—a first for an American president—and thrown in a warning about what happens to American help against Iran if Israelis pick anyone else.
MS NOW reports:
“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Trump wrote in his glowing Truth Social post backing Netanyahu. Trump called Netanyahu “an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran.” It was the first time a U.S. president had explicitly backed a candidate for Israeli prime minister—another example of Trump departing from the longstanding American tradition of not publicly endorsing candidates in foreign elections.
The election left Israel deadlocked, but an American president threatening the withdrawal of U.S. military help against Iran if Israeli voters don’t do his bidding is offensive. The aid is questionable and America should rethink it regardless of who Israel’s leader is.
And as with the AfD, Orbán, and Bolsonaro, Trump’s thumb landed for a familiar type. Netanyahu is not only an illiberal right-winger, but on trial for corruption, a case Trump has pressed Israel’s president to throw out and give the prime minister a pardon.
Nor is Trump finished: having claimed credit for Netanyahu’s showing, he now reportedly wants a say in who sits in Netanyahu’s next coalition.
Oct. 23, 2026
Trump Orders DOJ to Sue to Block Alaska’s Senate Results if GOP Loses to Try and Overturn the Election
Category: Power Consolidation
Trump has never accepted an election he lost, and now he’s getting a head start for the GOP’s predicted midterm loss. In Alaska, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is locked in a dead heat with Democrat Mary Peltola—and a third candidate and would-be spoiler, a retired teacher named Dan J. Sullivan, whom, it seems, operatives tied to Peltola’s campaign had a hand in recruiting. Alaska’s courts have already ruled that the second Sullivan can run.
But state election officials have gone out of their way to tell the two apart, listing the challenger as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” with no party label and the senator as the “(Registered Republican) Incumbent.” Predictably, that didn’t satisfy Trump, whose singular goal is a MAGA victory, not fairness—so he ordered the DOJ to sue to block Alaska from certifying the result if his candidate loses. He didn’t even bother pretending the call was made independently by the DOJ.
The Guardian reports:
“I’m the one that said do it,” the president told reporters as he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday. ... Experts saw the lawsuit as extremely weak and unlikely to succeed. “The legal claim is so absurdly thin, there’s essentially no likelihood of success,” Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in a blogpost.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the department’s lawsuit was “an unprecedented intervention by the federal government” and said the issue of two candidates with similar names appearing on the ballot had already been “fully litigated by Alaska’s courts.” He said the lawsuit “raises serious concerns about political interference,” adding that he could not recall an administration “ever attempting to stop the certification of an election—and certainly not 11 days before polls close”.
The lawsuit asks the court to hold certification while investigators figure out whether people who voted for Dan J. Sullivan really meant to vote for the senator—an impossible task in a country with a secret ballot, where no one knows who cast which vote. When Alaska’s Republican-led state government moved to dismiss the case as having “no legal basis,” the DOJ rewrote the complaint and asked that every ballot ranking Dan J. Sullivan be set aside for some future inquiry. Judge Sharon Gleason has already flagged the timing: the department waited until Alaskans had started voting, nearly four months after the state Supreme Court cleared Dan J. (the challenger) to run. A suit this late and this thin has little chance in court, but it makes a handy pretext for contesting a Peltola win.
Trump is demanding that Peltola be disqualified from running over what, if the reporting holds up, is a dirty but all-too-common trick by both sides. The machinery is already humming. The DOJ has been issuing grand jury subpoenassince August in a criminal probe of Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy, and Alaska’s lame-duck Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, has ordered his own investigation and refused to commit to certifying a Peltola win.
The plan for a race the GOP might lose is coming into focus: block the result, remove the opponent, and haul her into court.
Oct. 22, 2026
Rubio’s State Department Illegally Makes Voting for Trump a Promotion Requirement
Category: Power Consolidation
Marco Rubio, supposedly the sane, responsible adult in the Trump administration, runs a State Department that has reportedly hit on a simple way to choose its senior diplomats: ask whether they voted for Trump.
The Hill summarizes the Washington Sun’s reporting (which is paywalled):
The State Department is asking some career diplomats who are applying for senior assignments about their voting history in the past three presidential elections, according to a report. Candidates who voted for President Trump would be eligible for the mid- to upper-level foreign service roles, the Washington Sun reported, adding that campaign donations were also scrutinized. Federal law directly prohibits federal officials from discriminating against staff based on political affiliation. ... The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the professional association and union for foreign service officers, has heard anecdotes of senior foreign service members not getting jobs after going through interviews with questions that were political in nature.
The department couldn’t settle on a response. It declined to address the voting questions, dismissed the reporting as resting on an “absurd premise,” and explained that it is merely screening for “fidelity,” which is “not about partisan behavior but rather about executing the President’s vision for foreign policy.”
Fidelity has a specific meaning at Rubio’s State Department. Last year it added a “fidelity” criterion for tenure and promotion that rewards “protecting and promoting executive power” and “quickly and completely aligning oneself and one’s team to the most current USG [United States Government] goals.” The fidelity section of the evaluation scorecard even links to a White House page listing Trump’s executive orders.
It’s all flatly illegal, and AFSA says it is exploring legal options. Four years of this will hollow out the Foreign Service culture and ranks—and whoever comes next will have to spend years rebuilding it.
Oct. 22, 2026
Trump Tells Sick Camp Lejeune Veterans There’s ‘No Money’ for Them Unless Republicans Win on Tuesday
Category: Political Corruption
With early voting for the midterms already underway and Republicans growing increasingly desperate, Trump is once again turning to the tactics he knows best to help his party: bribery and threats. He told military families sickened by contaminated water at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune that they won’t be compensated unless Republicans win the midterms.
Military Times reports:
Addressing a crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump claimed his administration had already distributed $1 billion in cash settlements to victims of the pollutants. He also pledged to direct the Justice Department to resolve unsettled claims; however, he tied the possibility of future payments to partisan politics. “If we win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible and get it off the books and get it finished,” Trump said amid a slew of attacks on Democrats. He later added, “If we don’t win, there’s no money. If we do win, you’re getting it.” ... The toxic compound has been linked to a slew of devastating health consequences—including deaths—and led to dozens of lawsuits.
Nothing about these payments depends on which party controls Congress. The 2022 Camp Lejeune Justice Act lets victims sue the federal government, and settlements and court awards are paid out of the Treasury’s permanent Judgment Fund, not money lawmakers have to approve each year. So the only way the election could cut off the money is if Trump’s DOJ decides to punish sick veterans for how their neighbors voted.
The GOP has controlled both chambers of Congress for two years, and fewer than 1% of the more than 400,000 claims filed have been paid. Meanwhile, a bipartisan bill to fix the claims process has sat for over a year in a Senate committee, held up by Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
As one military victim and advocate said in response to the president’s comments, “Trying to use veterans and their family members as a pawn to help win an election, I think it’s wrong.”
Oct. 22, 2026
Trump, Vance Defend Vivek Ramaswamy’s Sick Attack Ad Featuring His Opponent’s Mother Who Defended Her Husband After He Raped Her Daughter
Category: Political Corruption
An ad from Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has caused widespread outrage, including from fellow Ohio Republicans—but not from the president or vice president. The ad features Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. But Acton was removed from her mother’s custody at age 12 after a grand jury indicted her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, on a charge of raping her. The case never went to trial because Donna Arthur and her husband left the state without telling authorities, and according to Acton’s brother, she stayed married to him until he died.
None of that has stopped Donald Trump and JD Vance from cheering the ad on, as The New York Times reports:
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Ohio Republicans condemning an advertisement being aired by Vivek Ramaswamy, his party’s nominee to succeed him, that uses the estranged mother of the Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton. But President Trump followed Mr. DeWine’s denunciation hours later with a social media post that insulted both Dr. Acton and Mr. DeWine and called the ad “hitting pay dirt.” ... Mr. Trump unreservedly championed the ad, describing it as “very powerful” and saying that everyone should “listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate.” Insisting that he had never heard of Dr. Acton before, Mr. Trump added: “Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would.”
In so doing, he found himself and Vice President JD Vance arrayed against Ohio’s governor; secretary of state; one of its sitting senators, Jon Husted; a former governor, John Kasich; and a former senator, Rob Portman, all of whom have distanced themselves from the ad or called for it to come down. It wasn’t just the establishment: Mr. Ramaswamy’s far-right opponent in the Republican primary for Ohio governor, Casey Putsch, has also slammed the ad.
Vance, meanwhile, said he was “a little bit disgusted”—not by the ad, but by Republican opposition to it, which he described as “whining.” He also praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is.” Trump kept at it, branding DeWine “disloyal” for objecting and saying he told Ramaswamy to keep the ad running because “she’s fair game.” Ramaswamy pulled it a week later anyway, after spending roughly $1 million of the $4 million he’d announced. So the president of the United States turned out to be more committed to this sick ad than the man who paid for it, which makes sense given that if Trump hadn’t licensed such gross behavior in the party, Ramaswamy wouldn’t be pushing out such excrement.
Oct. 21, 2026
White House Threatens Politico: Retract Stories or Face ‘Consequences’
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Trump administration has repeatedly lost in court over its attempt to ban Politico, CNN, and MS NOW from the White House because these outfits “purposely write negative news.” Someone may have mentioned the First Amendment to the president at some point, but it apparently didn’t take. Even after a judge ordered their access restored, White House officials kept turning the reporters away for hours, and a Secret Service agent confiscated their passes, according to the outlets’ lawyers. None of that has dampened Trump’s enthusiasm for threatening the free press.
Axios reports:
The White House counsel’s office warned Politico in a Monday letter that it had 48 hours to retract or correct recent stories about alleged staff drama, or it would suffer unspecified consequences. ... In his letter to Politico, White House Counsel Will Scharf singled out three stories concerning White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles despite “on-the-record refutations” or contrary evidence supplied by senior staff and even the president. Scharf wrote that “freedom of the press is not a professional exemption from accountability. I therefore demand that Politico immediately correct or retract these publications, issue a prominent and public apology to the President of the United States and to Ms. Wiles, and remove the false reporting from your digital archives.” Otherwise, he wrote, the White House would conduct an “immediate review of Politico’s relationship with the White House, and, of course, consideration of all other appropriate and available legal remedies.”
Politico corrected one of the three stories after follow-up reporting, the way news organizations routinely fix errors, and stood by the other two. Accuracy was never really what the White House was after. Scharf also wanted the stories wiped from Politico’s archives and a “prominent and public apology to the President of the United States,” the kind of ritual groveling expected of state media. The threatened “review of Politico’s relationship with the White House” is a promise to try again what a Trump-appointed judge has already blocked: kicking Politico out of the building over coverage the president dislikes.
The deadline for the threatened consequences passed on Oct. 22 with no word from the White House.
Oct. 20, 2026
A Venezuelan Billionaire Paid Trump’s Former Personal Lawyer $50 Million to Arrange a Pardon After His Pay-to-Play Attempt Failed
Category: Political Corruption
Julio Herrera Velutini, a billionaire who pleaded down from a felony bribery charge to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation last year, decided he wanted a pardon. First, his daughter donated $3.5 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC, but that didn’t produce the desired result. His family’s next move appears to have worked: a mysterious “general counsel” job worth more than $50 million for Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who at the time was a senior official in Trump’s Justice Department.
The New York Times explains:
Then the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and at the time was an adviser at the Justice Department. They offered her $10 million a year for four years along with a range of bonuses. In total, including bonuses, she was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Under the agreement, Ms. Habba would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Ms. Herrera set up in late October 2025 in Florida. The company has no public profile and its business remains unclear even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. Ms. Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered, while she was still serving as U.S. attorney in New Jersey. She formally began her work for Concord Partners on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon.
Both Habba and the Trump administration have denied any wrongdoing, of course, but at this point we all know how the presidential-pardon sausage gets made. Ironically, the case against Herrera centered on a $300,000 campaign contribution to the former governor of Puerto Rico—who, by the way, endorsed Trump in 2020—in exchange for firing a financial regulator who was investigating him.
Trump also pardoned the former governor, making this an ouroboros of corruption. And when Trump learned about Habba’s windfall, he reportedly erupted—and, according to the Times, told aides she should donate part of the money to his presidential library or another Trump-related entity. Selling access to a pardon is apparently fine; selling it without the boss getting his cut is another matter.
Oct. 16, 2026
The Pentagon Under the ‘Most Transparent’ Administration Is Sitting on Its Report About an Iranian School Bombing Until After the Midterms
Category: Political Corruption
On the first day of Trump’s war with Iran, a U.S. missile struck an Iranian elementary school, killing more than 100 children. Trump initially tried to blame Iran, then said he was “willing to live” with whatever the investigation found. By July, he was suggesting that images of the attack might be “AI generated” and that there couldn’t be “a conclusive report.” Now there apparently is one, and his Pentagon intends to keep it under wraps until the voting is over.
IBTimes UK summarizes the reporting:
Top Pentagon officials intend to delay releasing an internal report into the attack on a school in southern Iran until after the US midterm elections at the earliest, according to sources familiar with the matter, The Straits Times reported. The sources told the newspaper that advisers to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had communicated the plan to some Pentagon personnel. ... According to The Straits Times, the full US probe, launched in March, remains unpublished, although officials said it had been all but complete for several months. …
Mark Esper, who served as defence secretary during President Donald Trump’s first administration, also stressed the importance of disclosure. ‘Transparency is important—obviously for those affected but for us as well—for the nature of our government, which is supposed to be open and transparent,’ Esper said. ‘We should acknowledge our mistakes and fix it to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
Pentagon investigators found that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the strike. Officially, the investigation is still “ongoing,” eight months after the attack and months after officials say it was essentially finished. With the war already unpopular, the administration that former press secretary Karoline Leavitt once billed as “the most accessible and transparent administration in history” has apparently decided voters can learn how more than 100 children were killed after they’ve cast their ballots.
Oct. 14, 2026
Trump Calls for Leakers to Be Shot, Then Says Journalists Are ‘Almost as Bad’
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Trump administration has had a tough time keeping information, both classified and just plain embarrassing, out of the public eye. Part of this is due to its own incompetence—remember when The Atlantic’s editor in chief was added to a secret Signal chat?—but it has also been plagued with leaks. Trump has threatened leakers with various punishments (except when they’re leaking information about Democrats, of course) multiple times. His latest threat, at a campaign event in Arizona, also featured the president calling the media “almost as bad as a leaker,” just after calling for leakers to be shot.
The New York Times has the story:
“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Mr. Trump said, prompting applause from the gathered crowd in Bullhead City. “In the old days we used to shoot leakers, you know?” Even for a president known for his lack of tolerance for those willing to express dissent or question his power, Mr. Trump’s endorsement of having government sources shot marked an extraordinary escalation of his attacks on news gathering and those willing to speak to the press. ... It was not the first time Mr. Trump has railed against government sources. When he first entered office, he promised to catch the “low-life leakers” who provided the news media with information about his administration’s ties to Russia. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a White House official in Mr. Trump’s first term, told a Mediaite podcast that she had heard Mr. Trump talk about how a staff member who leaked should be executed.
As for how journalists qualify, Trump explained that reporters “leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?” By that standard, the category of people Trump would like to see facing a firing squad now includes much of the press corps and, plausibly, his own vice president, who has reportedly been briefing reporters anonymously as he distances himself from Trump’s more unpopular policies ahead of 2028. That would make Trump two-for-two on endorsing violence against his own vice presidents.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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What else that is corrupt can Trump and Republicans force upon Americans. This list is so long I couldn't read it all as not a good way to start a Sunday