The Trump Administration Is Developing a Multi-Pronged Strategy to Surveil its Critics, Especially Those Protesting its Brutal Immigration Policies: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our mid-February selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The UnPopulist, along with its parent organization, the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), launched Executive Watch early in Trump’s second term. This project, designed to track presidential abuses of power as they are happening, 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?
Feb. 13, 2026
The Trump Administration Issues Subpoenas to Social Media Platforms Demanding That They Rat Out Protesters, Massively Expanding the Surveillance State
Category: Policy Illegality
One of the grievances the Trump administration cites against previous administrations is the government seeking cooperation from social media companies to root out misinformation during the pandemic. This was supposedly about freedom of speech, though it turns out it was mostly about conservatives being in favor of Covid misinformation.
That free speech argument has since been thrown out the window, and now the Trump administration is demanding its own partnership with social media companies, this time to fork over information and participate in surveillance against anti-ICE protesters and critics of the administration.
The New York Times reports:
The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.
In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.
The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court.
The most ominous part is the use of “administrative subpoenas“ to demand information. These are not real subpoenas, because at no point has the government had to demonstrate “probable cause” to an independent judge. Instead, the burden of proof is reversed and shifted onto the person being investigated, who has to go to the courts to block the subpoena.
The Trump administration is destroying the Fourth Amendment, intimidating tech companies into accepting that the federal government can compel information without ever going to a real court.
Feb. 11, 2026
RFK Jr.-Led FDA Rejects Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine After Suddenly Announcing Standards Never Required Before
Category: Policy Illegality
The best thing Donald Trump did in his first term was his rapid approval and support for mRNA vaccines against Covid. But the populists and conspiracy theorists who brought him to power turned against vaccines, and especially against mRNA technology. So Trump installed anti-vaccine crackpot RFK Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, who is now abusing his power to block new vaccines.
The medical news site Healio reports:
The FDA has refused to review Moderna’s application for its messenger RNA-based influenza vaccine, according to the company.
In a press release, Moderna noted that the FDA’s rejection of the vaccine, mRNA-1010, did not come with any safety or efficacy concerns. Instead, in a letter to the company, the FDA said the application lacked an “adequate and well-controlled” study. …
Moderna said Prasad’s letter is “inconsistent with previous written communications from CBER [Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research] to Moderna” in 2024, when Moderna submitted its phase 3 study protocol for review, as well as in 2025 upon completion of the phase 3 trial.
Specifically, CBER told the company in 2024 that “it would be acceptable to use a licensed standard dose influenza vaccine as the comparator,” according to Moderna. …
In 2025, CBER requested supportive analyses on the comparator—which were provided by Moderna—be included with submission and indicated that the data would be significant during the biologics license application review. According to Moderna, at no point did CBER indicate there would be a refusal to review the application because of the comparator. …
“The arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the FDA’s decision—after Moderna had already consulted with them regarding the trial’s characteristics—is of major concern,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Healio. “Companies need predictability if they are going to invest a billion dollars to develop a new product. If the regulatory pathway is subject to arbitrary changes, they will no longer be willing to make such investments.”
This is a microcosm of how Trump’s abuses of power are crippling the economy, because no one can plan when the rules about vaccines, tariffs, and everything else are constantly changing, depending on the interests or personal obsessions of the people in power.
Feb. 10, 2026
Trump Threatens to Illegally Block Opening of US-Canada Bridge He Previously Supported to Punish Canada and/or Help a Local Billionaire
Category: Political Corruption
In yet another social media rant, Donald Trump threatened to block traffic across a new bridge that is being built from Canada to Michigan—a project Trump himself backed in his first term. Trump is now saying:
I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,” Trump wrote. “We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY.
With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of the U.S. Market will be astronomical.
The New York Times reports also that Trump’s reversal happened after his trade secretary’s meeting with a local billionaire, who stands to lose if the bridge is opened:
Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with [Secretary of Commerce Howard] Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Trump threatened to block the planned opening of a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, which would take away toll revenue from Mr. Moroun’s crossing, if Canadian officials did not address a long list of grievances.
The Moroun family has for decades mounted legal challenges to block or delay the competing project, known as Gordie Howe International Bridge. One of the challenges reached the Canadian Supreme Court, while the family has also lobbied extensively against it. …
It was not immediately clear how Mr. Trump would block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, which remains under construction.
Actually, it is clear Trump has no legal authority to do this. Whatever the reason for Trump’s threats—shaking down Canada or obliging a billionaire, or both—it is clear that he will stop at nothing to abuse his authority.
Feb. 10, 2026
FBI Seizes 2020 Ballots From Georgia Based on a Warrant Relying on Debunked Conspiracy Theories
Category: Power Consolidation
As part of a preemptive campaign to discredit midterm congressional elections that his party is likely to lose, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has seized 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia. But the information they used to obtain a warrant for this search is based on debunked election conspiracy theories.
The New York Times reports:
An FBI search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday shows that a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., was set off by a leading election denier in the Trump administration and relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked. …
Many of the claims in the affidavit refer to long-held—and consistently debunked—conspiracy theories about elections in Georgia, including arguments about fraudulent and duplicate absent ballots, election-machine tabulator tapes and missing ballot images. The claims often focus on small administrative errors or easily explainable abnormalities as evidence of fraud. …
One claim in the affidavit comes from a Georgia resident who said there were 17,852 “missing ballot images” in Fulton County. This claim, and similar ones about ballot images, were popular among Mr. Trump’s supporters immediately after the 2020 election. But Fulton County officials noted that, at the time, the law did not require them to maintain ballot images.
Missing ballot images do not mean ballots are missing. Gabriel Sterling, a former top election official in Georgia, noted in 2021 that election officials “have all of the actual ballots that have been counted 3 times.” …
At least 11 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results in Georgia have been filed, according to Fulton County court records; none have proved that there was widespread fraud or malfeasance.
It is an abuse of executive power to squander the credibility of the FBI by using it to promote the theories of crazed partisans. This is not about relitigating an old election but about discrediting new ones in an attempt to prevent the American people from withdrawing the consent of the governed.
Feb. 7, 2026
Trump’s Military Commanders Order Troops to Buy Tickets to Melania Documentary That Pays Her $28 Million
Category: Personal Grift
Jeff Bezos spending $75 million on a documentary about Donald Trump’s wife, from which she will personally pocket an estimated $28 million, is an obvious bribe paid to the president. What is worse is that some in the executive branch are reportedly abusing their power to drive up the film’s ticket sales by providing a captive audience of military families.
The Daily Beast has the story:
The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office—despite universally terrible reviews.
According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets. …
“Nobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,” one of those [MRFF] members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen.
The unit commander in question is alleged to have worn red MAGA hats in the past and “made it very clear” how he feels about those who do not support the administration’s agenda.
He is also alleged to have made seeing Melania count as one of the three “unit activity events” service members are required to attend each month. Such events are designed to promote bonds within combat units and their families.
The letter said, “…he ‘advised’ our unit members and their families to join him and his wife and children for a showing of that new documentary called Melania at an off-base movie theater. … When he said ‘advised,’ we know what that meant.”
In addition to the personal corruption of driving viewers to a documentary for the personal financial benefit of the president’s wife, there is something in this story even more corrosive to a democracy: making the military subservient to a partisan agenda and subjecting its members to partisan loyalty tests—a total no-no in this country but a norm that the administration has already broken repeatedly.
Feb. 6, 2026
FTC Targets an Ad Agency for Using a Fact-Checking Site That Rates Some Right-Wing Outfits as Unreliable
Category: Presidential Retribution
The one consistent enemy of the Trump administration is fact-checking. Donald Trump loves creating and spreading false reports, rumors, conspiracy theories, and misinformation—and he resents any independent source of information that can counter his wild claims. Now he is abusing his power to cut off support for a prominent and well-regarded anti-misinformation site.
The Washington Post reports:
Founded in 2018 by a pair of veteran media executives, NewsGuard researches news sites and assigns them “reliability ratings” based on their journalistic standards, selling these scores to readers, tech platforms, and advertisers that want to steer clear of low-quality sources. The company, which insists it is rigorously nonpartisan, has made enemies in recent years by giving low ratings to conservative outlets such as the right-wing cable news channels Newsmax and One America News.
Last May, Trump’s FTC launched an investigation of NewsGuard…. Then, before approving a $13 billion merger that created the world’s largest ad agency, the FTC included an order that effectively blocks the newly formed goliath from ever doing business with companies like NewsGuard. …
NewsGuard argues that the FTC embarked on a targeted regulatory campaign it likened to “the witch hunts of the McCarthy era,” violating its First and Fourth Amendment rights. While the FTC is tasked with enforcing fair business practices, NewsGuard’s lawsuit alleges that under Trump-appointed Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the agency is “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce, but rather to censor speech.”
This is the fruit of Trump’s obsession with an alleged “unitary executive” in which officials in traditionally independent regulatory agencies now take orders from him personally—and carry out his vendettas against his political enemies.
Feb. 5, 2026
Trump Withholds Appropriated Funds for Rail Tunnel Project Till Penn Station and Dulles Airport Are Named After Him
Category: Power Consolidation
When the president spends federal money, that money does not belong to him. It is allocated by Congress to be used for the benefit of the American people. But Donald Trump thinks everything belongs to him, and therefore everything should be named after him. So he is holding up federal spending in an attempt to force people to name more things after him.
Punchbowl News had the scoop, but see this follow-up in The New York Times:
The Trump administration has sought to pressure Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, to help name New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after President Trump in exchange for releasing billions of dollars he has frozen for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River. …
The push to rename the station and the airport for Mr. Trump comes as the president, who recently put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has been on a renaming spree and has appeared increasingly preoccupied with his legacy. …
[T]he Transportation Department said in October that it would withhold money until the project could be reviewed to make sure that its contracts followed with new federal rules targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
That announcement came in the middle of a 43-day government shutdown, timing that seemed intended to pressure Mr. Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, into making a deal.
In a way, it’s refreshing to see all the other excuses about DEI and budget negotiations swept away and have it out in the open that what this is really about is Donald Trump’s personal vanity—which he wants to satisfy with the tax dollars of the American public.
Feb. 4, 2026
DHS Orders ICE Agents to Build a Database of Americans Protesting Immigration Enforcement Operations In a Blatant Violation of the First Amendment
Category: Power Consolidation
The Trump administration does not regard domestic dissent as legitimate, and it has been acting accordingly. It has tear-gassed peaceful protesters and followed and harassed observers of its immigrant enforcement surge in Minnesota. This is all part of a larger effort to use ICE to build a domestic surveillance state to track and target dissenters.
The New York Times offers an analysis:
The Department of Homeland Security has tried to criminalize journalism by characterizing reporting as doxxing and observing as impeding law enforcement, and its agents are now threatening and sometimes assaulting people who record them—an effort to secure, in addition to the state’s monopoly on violence, a monopoly on surveillance. This may be another reason so many immigration officers are masked while on duty: They know better than we do what it means to show one’s face. In Minneapolis and elsewhere, agents now carry tools of surveillance into the field, just as they do their guns. …
[W]hile it is a familiar warning from civil libertarians that surveillance tools introduced in one narrow context will quickly be deployed in other, more worrying ways, immigration agents appear already to have made that jump, turning their apps on citizens who aren’t doing anything illegal beyond expressing hostility to the vision of state power embraced by MAGA and embodied by its mostly masked immigration enforcement army. …
A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.” Last month Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, bragged to Fox News about how he was pushing to “create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault—we’re going to make them famous.” …
… giving indiscriminate checkpoint-style power to every agent in the field, [David] Bier said, is “a total reshaping of law enforcement in the United States.” Instead of investigating a crime by identifying a suspect and then pursuing information about him or her, officers instead begin with someone they want to treat as a criminal and then use the technology to find a justification. “This is so far from any type of typical law enforcement activity that I can’t even think of a parallel,” he said. “It’s entirely backward, and it’s all enabled by this technology.”
“We’ve seen cases where agents show up at people’s houses. Sometimes they’re following them home. Sometimes they’re showing up another way,” said Nathan Freed Wessler of the A.C.L.U. “How did they figure out who that person is and where they live?”
This follows from the basic logic behind the Department of Homeland Security: an effort to turn the overseas War on Terror back toward America’s homeland. The Trump administration is taking that to its ultimate logical conclusion, treating internal dissent as terrorism to be tracked and forcibly disrupted.
Feb. 3, 2026
Republicans Urged by President to ‘Nationalize Voting’ in an Attempt to Unconstitutionally Grab Power From States
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump repeatedly lied that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him because he can’t stand the idea that he was defeated. The midterms are expected to result in huge losses for Republicans given the widespread disgust with his presidency. So Trump is desperately flailing around looking for ways to really steal the elections and avert that outcome. The effort won’t succeed, but he is calling for an unconstitutional federalization of election administration.
The Washington Post reports:
President Donald Trump said Monday that Republican lawmakers should nationalize voting—claiming a power explicitly granted to states in the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking to right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, who recently stepped down from his role as the FBI’s deputy director, Trump again falsely alleged that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he urged Republicans to “take over” elections and nationalize the process.
“We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump told Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections are determined by each state, not the federal government. Congress has the power to set election rules, but the Constitution does not give the president any role on that subject. …
On Monday, while speaking to Bongino, Trump said without offering evidence that there are “states that are so crooked” and that there are “states that I won that show I didn’t win.” He also baselessly claimed that undocumented immigrants were allowed to vote illegally in 2020. …
While Trump has repeatedly and baselessly accused states such as Georgia of running fraudulent elections, U.S. national security officials have said they found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and numerous courts rejected claims of election irregularities as unfounded.
This can be taken as an admission that Trump expects his party to lose the midterm congressional elections, so he is preparing either to disrupt them or to deny the results. But the Constitution gave Congress a limited role in elections—and the president no role at all—precisely to prevent this.
Feb. 2, 2026
Tulsi Gabbard Oversteps Her Authority by Directing the FBI to Seize Georgia’s Ballots to Help Trump Prove His Stolen Election Lie
Category: Power Consolidation
There is a long-established norm that the president of the United States is never directly involved in the activities of the FBI and the Department of Justice. This is to keep these agencies from being abused as the agents of a partisan agenda and political retribution. But Trump killed those norms early on, and he has now taken his political interference to new levels.
The New York Times reports:
Behind closed doors, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, met with some of the same FBI agents, members of the bureau’s field office in Atlanta, which is conducting the election inquiry, three people with knowledge of the meeting said. They could not say why Ms. Gabbard, who also appeared on site at the search, was there, but her continued presence has raised eyebrows given that her role overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies does not include on-site involvement in criminal investigative work.
What occurred during the meeting was even further outside the bounds of normal law enforcement procedure. Ms. Gabbard used her cellphone to call Mr. Trump, who did not initially pick up but called back shortly after, the people said.
The president addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry, the three people said. …
Even for a president who has radically transformed the Justice Department and the FBI by trampling over their political independence and using them as tools for personal retribution, Mr. Trump appears to be taking that kind of involvement to a new level. Rather than going to senior department or FBI officials, Mr. Trump spoke directly to the frontline agents doing the granular work of a politically sensitive investigation in which he has a large personal stake.
The shoe waiting to drop in this story is the involvement of Tulsi Gabbard, whose area of authority is foreign intelligence, not domestic law enforcement. But Gabbard is a longtime election conspiracy theorist, confirming that this is Trump’s attempt to lend legitimacy to false claims about previous elections—and future ones.
Feb. 2, 2026
A Whistleblower Accuses Tulsi Gabbard of Burying a Sensitive Intercept in Which Foreign Nationals Were Discussing a Person Close to the Trump Administration
Category: Power Consolidation
Does the director of national intelligence exist to ensure that our government is informed about foreign threats—or to cover up for the president and his associates? That question is raised by allegations that Tulsi Gabbard buried a whistleblower’s complaint that her office was hiding intelligence about someone connected with Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal initially broke the story, but The New York Times has an update with more information:
Members of Congress were briefed this week on a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to President Trump, according to people familiar with the material.
It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran. The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, around the time the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. Mr. Trump ordered a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
The identity of the person close to Mr. Trump could not be immediately determined, nor could the content of what the two foreign nationals were saying about the person. …
The whistle-blower accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies, according to people familiar with the complaint. …
While inspectors general are required to notify Congress only about complaints they find credible, some of the administration critics said Ms. Gabbard erred in not alerting the congressional intelligence committees or members of congressional leadership about the whistle-blower report or the underlying intelligence soon after it was lodged.
Congressional officials learned about the complaint, but not its contents, when Andrew Bakaj, a lawyer for the whistle-blower, sent a letter to the intelligence committees in November.
This is all somewhat mysterious, considering that it involved secret information that has been hidden from review by independent sources. And perhaps the underlying intelligence will amount to nothing. But who could be reliable judges of this? Members of Congress and particularly members of the opposition party.
Yet a running theme of this administration has been a repeated refusal to share vital information with Congress, precisely to prevent this kind of oversight from an independent branch of government.
Jan. 31, 2026
Days Before Inauguration, the Trump Family Secretly Secured $500 Million From UAE Royal Family for Its New Crypto Venture In Exchange for Handing it Sensitive AI Chips Technology
Category: Personal Grift
Donald Trump’s second term is remarkable for the extent to which he ignores all ethics rules and intertwines political and foreign policy decisions with his and his family’s financial interests. Now we have discovered that, just as he was taking office, the Trump family made a vastly lucrative—and secret—deal with the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.
The Wall Street Journal broke the story, and The New York Times follows up:
Days before his father’s inauguration in January 2025, Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, signed the agreement with the investment firm for a $500 million investment in World Liberty, The Journal reported. David Wachsman, a World Liberty spokesman, confirmed the transaction in a statement to The New York Times.
That agreement gave the Emirati-backed firm a 49 percent stake in World Liberty. Two top lieutenants to the U.A.E.’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, joined the board of World Liberty. …
President Trump, through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, effectively controls a large stake in World Liberty, which generated $57 million for him just as the company was starting up, according to his financial disclosure report last year. …
Overall, the Trump family’s crypto investments in the past year have increased the family’s net worth by more than $1 billion, at least on paper.
At the same time that the crypto deal came together, the Emirati government secured an agreement with the Trump administration for the export of hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to power A.I. technology.
Trump consistently treats the presidency, and the government he commands, as his personal property, to be used not according to the interests or the laws of the United States, but to line his own pockets. No decision he makes, particularly in foreign policy, can be taken at face value rather than attributed either to personal vanity or to personal gain.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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It’s the unprecedented combination of all five of those problems that makes it so terribly troubling, so it’s almost an exercise in futility to choose only one. If choosing one is required, it would have to be the consolidation of power, because that is what enables all the other abuses.
The making of lists of “domestic terrorist” scares me the most. It’s extremely nazi-ish and sends a very threatening message to American citizens, defy us and YOU and your family will be targeted. I have to remind myself that this is real and really happening here sometimes. It really makes me hate MAGA, and I am sure that is deliberate too. Our government is openly hostile to US, the people and it is all deliberate to install fear, they feel most will just submit and pee down their leg. They want to identify dissenters early on. We have to protect ourselves and our family while this regime is in charge. Park far away or take a bus to your protest location. Always Video, but do it more covertly, don’t put yourself or fam in danger. Be silent, its more annoying if you give no reaction to their taunting. Maga has a big mouth they love to run. They want to provoke us into fighting, always keep that in the back of your head. Don’t let them.
Midterm’s can’t get here soon enough. But i fear they will fight the results to the nth degree determined to stay in power. Because Republicans must know by now that once Dems get power back, they are all toast. No one will give them the chance to run anything again for decades, if ever - or if their party even manages to survive after this huge moral collapse. I sometimes wish I could time travel forward, so I can know how to prepare for the future, for my son’s future, I don’t have any confidence in my country anymore.