Executive Watch meticulously tracks and documents presidential abuses of power. 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?
Oct. 2, 2026
Trump’s Botched Shuttering of Voice of America Means That Taxpayers Are Paying $1.6 Million a Week for Its Staff to Sit at Home
Category: Policy Illegality
In March 2025, Trump moved to shut down Voice of America’s parent agency, and most of its staff were put on paid leave. Congress refused to go along, funding the agency at $643 million in a bill Trump signed. This past March, a federal judge ruled the layoffs invalid and ordered the staff back to work. The administration then asked an appeals court to pause that order while it appeals, and the court agreed. The result is a limbo: The administration can’t fire these employees. And it won’t let them work. A new State Department inspector general report found that 420 of them were still on paid leave as of July, at a cost of about $1.6 million a week.
Politico reports:
At the time, USAGM cast the moves explicitly as an effort to protect taxpayers. ... But rapidly cutting the agency did not necessarily mean the government stopped paying for it. …
A separate property audit found USAGM went at least seven months without an operational property management system after terminating the one it had used. Of 1,531 disposed items auditors examined, the agency could not provide supporting documentation for 1,512.
Congress debated VOA’s future, cut its budget by about a quarter, but kept it alive. That’s how spending decisions are supposed to be made. The administration instead tried to kill the agency by executive order without weighing the costs. Taxpayers are now paying to kill VOA while also paying to keep it alive.
Oct. 2, 2026
Trump Finds Ways Around a Court Order Blocking His Ban on Outlets He Dislikes
Category: Presidential Retribution
On September 18, Trump announced that he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!,” which he absurdly called “a threat to our National Security.” The next day, their press credentials were deactivated. As evidence of the supposed security threat, the White House later pointed to stories about the Iran war, the East Wing ballroom, and even the GOP’s midterm convention. Well, the three outlets sued—and U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order. Kelly found the ban likely violated their due process rights.
The White House let the reporters back in, but it has kept finding ways to punish the outlets, including barring CNN from Air Force One. With the restraining order set to expire on October 8, the outlets are asking the court to keep the ban blocked until the case is resolved.
NPR explains:
Three news outlets that President Donald Trump abruptly banished from White House grounds this month asked a federal court to block the ban until the case is resolved, saying the administration has “persisted in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing its ban” despite a judge’s restraining order—including selectively barring CNN from White House pool duties. ... [Attorney General Todd] Blanche defended [the Air Force One exclusion], too. “The president has every right to decide who gets to fly on his plane,” he said in the Sunday interview. He added that Trump was “sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news.” He added that news coverage he described as “misinformation” amounted to a national security issue.
“That is what is a national security problem, when you have complete misinformation coming out of the White House,” he said. Kelly threw cold water on that argument in his ruling last week granting the temporary restraining order against the White House ban. “The court is skeptical … that defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation” for removal of access, Kelly wrote.
The press pool fight shows how the administration is working around the court. When CNN was first barred from pool duty, the other four networks in the TV pool, Fox News included, refused to take its place. That led to absurdities like this press conference with no audio.
Kelly’s order covers access to the White House grounds. It doesn’t reach Air Force One or the president’s travel, where the White House picks the reporters who come along. So the White House kept CNN off Air Force One and, days later, pulled it from the pool for a trip to Texas and Oklahoma, leaving that trip with no television pool coverage at all. And in an October 2 filing, the Justice Department argued that Trump may ban the outlets because he determined they failed to meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” A president who gets to decide which outlets meet his standard of professionalism also gets to decide which coverage the public sees.
Oct. 2, 2026
Trump Personally Pushed to Use Border Security Funds to Pay for Political TV Ads Praising Himself to Influence the Midterms
Category: Political Corruption
A string of recent TV ads praising Donald Trump carries an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” In one, Trump declares “America will never be a communist country” as the song “Love Me” plays. Another nearly copies a 2024 campaign video, with Trump calling supporters to his “final battle” against “the fake news media.” The White House insists the spots are “public service announcements.”
But as NBC News confirmed, the money came from border security funds:
The Trump administration paid for TV ads showing him in a favorable light using money intended for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an official and a top Republican senator confirmed to NBC News. ... The unusual ads — one of which is nearly identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad — include disclaimers stating they were paid for by the U.S. government. The administration’s apparent use of taxpayer money to produce ads that resemble campaign advertisements has drawn bipartisan criticism. “It’s a great message. I like the message,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Monday of the most recent ad, “but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.” …
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, confirmed the official’s account of the source of the funds, saying that “it was taken out of funding that was supposed to be for Customs and Border Protection” in Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill, which Republicans passed along party lines in 2025. Collins, who faces a difficult re-election bid this fall, said the Appropriations Committee she chairs had no role in the money that the White House used. In fact, she said appropriations bills to fund the government typically have restrictions against using one account for another purpose. “That’s why the administration went around the appropriations process and used an account that was part of the reconciliation bill,” Collins said in the Capitol.
The story has grown since. The New York Times reported that Trump personally instructed budget director Russ Vought to find the money inside the government, which produced a $20 million contract funded through CBP. CNN has identified at least 13 such ads, made in-house by the White House video team. Sen. Thom Tillis summed it up: “It feels like Viktor Orbán talking to the Hungarian people.”
Trump is effectively forcing taxpayers to fund his party’s midterm campaign.
Sept. 28, 2026
Trump Wants to Sell American Arms to China While Using Taiwan as a ‘Negotiating Chip’ to Drive a Better Deal With the Enemy Nation
Category: Policy Illegality
According to David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador to China, Donald Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping whether he’d like to buy American weapons. Meanwhile, the administration is holding up a record arms package for Taiwan, the democracy those weapons are meant to protect from China.
The New York Times has the story:
President Trump has asked Xi Jinping, the leader of China, whether he would like to buy American weapons, David Perdue, the American ambassador to China, said in a television interview on Sunday. “President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” Mr. Perdue said on “Fox News Sunday” while discussing the state visit by Mr. Xi to Washington last week. “He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point.” ... When asked for comment, the White House said through a U.S. official that the United States had no plans to sell arms to China. The State Department said in a statement that “U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.” …
Mr. Trump has been withholding a $14 billion sale of weapons to Taiwan, even though the U.S. government has been required by law since 1979 to send arms of a defensive nature to the island. The latest arms package was put together by State Department officials and was approved by congressional leaders early this year, but has since languished at the department, The New York Times reported. ... On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio was asked by reporters in New York about the withholding of the Taiwan arms package. He said the sale was being reviewed in light of the need for “balancing our industrial capacity and our military-industrial base” and determining whether the United States needed the arms for itself. It is unclear how Mr. Trump’s offer to sell arms to China is consistent with that reasoning.
Trump’s own response makes Perdue’s account easy to believe: after first denying it, he mused that selling China weapons might be “a good idea.” It fits his record of fawning over dictators and undercutting allies. He has called Taiwan’s arms a “negotiating chip,” and he approved the sale of advanced AI chips to China over the objections of China hawks, including some in his own party.
Sept. 25, 2026
Trump Unilaterally Cancels Congressionally Approved Spending on Immigration Services, in Defiance of the Law
Category: Policy Illegality
Last year, Donald Trump canceled $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid with a “pocket rescission.” The maneuver works by asking Congress to rescind funds so close to the end of the fiscal year that the money expires before lawmakers can act. The Supreme Court let that cancellation stand. Ruling at an early stage of the case, it held that the plaintiffs likely couldn’t sue to force the spending, and it never decided whether the tactic itself was legal. Having gotten away with it once, Trump is doing it again. On September 25, five days before the fiscal year ended, the White House announced it was canceling roughly $810 million more, which it rounds up to “nearly $1 billion.”
Politico reports:
In a move that will almost certainly set up an ugly government funding battle after the midterms, Trump has again claimed the power to execute a so-called “pocket rescission” to nix money Congress has already enacted. The funding the president declared canceled is for immigration services, support to foreign countries, education programs, health research efforts and assistance for businesses owned by minorities. The Senate’s top Republican appropriator, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, immediately blasted the move as illegal, saying in a statement Friday night that “any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
“This move shows that OMB intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law,” Collins added, pledging to work with other lawmakers “to address these illegal actions.” ... Top Republicans have rejected Democratic demands to undo Trump’s cancellation last summer of billions of dollars in foreign aid by pushing off the expiration date for that cash. They have also rebuffed the idea of preventing Trump from executing another pocket rescission this year by barring the president from sending a clawbacks request in the last quarter of the fiscal year.
Days later, the Government Accountability Office reaffirmed that pocket rescissions are unlawful. Fiscal conservatives might happily cut some of these programs, but Congress has to be the one doing the cutting, as it did when it passed a $9 billion rescissions package through the normal process last year. If a president can void a spending law simply by sitting on the money until the clock runs out, appropriations become suggestions. Republican appropriators call the maneuver illegal, yet their leaders declined to take the one step that would have prevented a repeat. That choice is letting the power of the purse drift from the branch the Constitution gave it to.
Sept. 21, 2026
White House Launches ‘Trump TV,’ a Propaganda Channel, as It Locks Out Independent Press
Category: Power Consolidation
On the same day the TV networks suspended pool coverage in solidarity with CNN, the White House rolled out its own replacement. “Trump TV: The Essentials Station” is a 24/7 YouTube stream of the president’s speeches, appearances, and administration-produced highlights. The White House was explicit about its purpose: “Not every big moment has made it on your TV, now it can.”
The Guardian explains:
With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place”. The anchor-less channel dispenses with traditional broadcast norms. With no schedule, no on-screen description of what is being shown, and zero context for where or when a clip was recorded, the effect of having the channel on in the background is less like watching a news network and more like installing Trump wallpaper—a 24-hour fever dream of self-soothing propaganda for the Maga faithful.
On Tuesday, the stream swung wildly between cinematic replays of Trump attending a UK state banquet, emotional footage of Laken Riley’s mother praising Trump as “a man of his word”, an 18-month-old clip of Melania Trump at an awards ceremony, and Trump delivering a long, rambling press conference in February 2025 in which he casually advocated for the US taking over Gaza and absorbing Canada as the 51st state.
Presidents have long streamed their speeches and events through official channels, and there’s nothing wrong with the White House posting its own footage. Trump TV is troubling because of its timing and its pitch. It arrived just as the administration was locking independent outlets out of the White House, and it was openly marketed as a way to reach viewers without them. Official footage shows what the administration wants seen, while independent cameras capture the tough questions, the stumbles, and the moments officials would rather edit out. A government that decides who may film the president, and then offers its own feed in their place, is building the kind of curated reality that state-run media provides in autocracies like Russia.
Sept. 18, 2026
The DOJ Claims the Power to Kill Environmental Lawsuits by Private Citizens, Starting With One Against Trump’s Lackey, Elon Musk
Category: Power Consolidation
In April, the NAACP sued Elon Musk’s xAI under the Clean Air Act. The suit alleges that the company has been running dozens of gas turbines without required permits at a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, that supplies its massive “Colossus 2” data center. (Mississippi regulators say no permits were needed.) In June, the Justice Department moved to intervene and have the suit thrown out, the first time the federal government has entered a citizen suit against a private company in order to end it. When the district court didn’t rule, DOJ appealed to the Fifth Circuit on September 18, calling the delay an “effective denial.” The government argues that xAI’s Grok, which the Pentagon uses, is crucial to national security, a justification the administration increasingly invokes to escape judicial review. It also claims that its statutory right to intervene in citizen suits carries with it the power to dismiss them
As Steve Vladeck, who sits on the board of Earthjustice, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, explained when DOJ first made the argument in June, the implications reach far beyond one data center:
[M]ost gallingly, DOJ is making this argument in a context in which it is making no argument that xAI is acting legally. In other words, the central premise of DOJ’s submission is that xAI can be flagrantly breaking the law (and heavily damaging the environment), and only the executive branch of the federal government has the constitutional authority to do anything about it. ... But the legal theory the government is advancing reaches far beyond one (massive) data center and the power plants being built to power it. It is an Article II argument—rooted in the President’s duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”—that, taken to its logical limits, would give the executive branch unilateral authority to shut down any citizen suit under any environmental statute, against any defendant, whenever the government decides that non-enforcement better serves its policy goals. …
Ultimately, the Trump administration is asking a federal court to hold that the government’s unwillingness to enforce the law is itself a reason no one else may. That is not a national-security argument, however it is packaged. It is a claim about who gets to hold power accountable—and the answer the government is offering, for the first time in the citizen suit’s half-century history, is “only us, and only when we choose to.”
Some conservative and libertarian scholars have long questioned whether citizen suits square with Article II, and that’s a legitimate debate for Congress and the courts. The administration is asking for something far broader: a standing executive veto over lawsuits Congress expressly authorized, exercised case by case on behalf of whichever defendants it favors. Its first beneficiary is a company owned by the world’s richest man. A president who can decline to enforce the law and also forbid anyone else from enforcing it gets to decide what the law requires and whom it binds.
Sept. 15, 2026
Trump Administration Wants Signs at the Smithsonian Warning Visitors Not to Trust Its History and Smearing Its Black Leader as ‘Anti-White’
Category: Power Consolidation
The Trump administration has spent months trying to force the Smithsonian Institution into ideological alignment, including threatening to cut off its federal support. In July, Trump signed an executive order directing the National Park Service to install signs on the walkways outside the National Museum of American History. The signs would tell visitors that the museum’s exhibits are inaccurate and direct them elsewhere for “accurate information.” Now the Interior Department is moving to put them up.
As The New Republic explains:
According to reporting by The Atlantic, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is mobilizing the National Park Service to display at least a dozen signs around the National Museum of American History warning visitors of “ideologies that distract from a coherent and accurate presentation of America’s story” before they step foot on the premises. The signs are projected to cost at least $84,000. ... When he announced the signs to Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski, Burgum said that the “informational signage therefore will provide visitors with important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance.” “We believe the public should enter the museum fully equipped with the information needed to evaluate whether to invest their time in viewing these exhibits and programming,” he wrote in a letter to the senators.
It is not yet clear what exactly the “information needed” will be. The text of the signs or the plans for their physical structure is still undetermined, but [Burgum’s] letter suggests direct attacks on Smithsonian leaders, including [Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie] Bunch and museum director Anthea Hartig.
The letter makes those attacks explicit. “Visitors should be aware of Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch’s history of invidious discrimination and anti-white animus,” it reads. Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, announced on September 8 that he will retire at the end of the year, though he says the administration’s pressure did not influence his decision.
Rewriting history to suit those in power and appease dominant groups is a staple of the authoritarian playbook. Trump calls it “restoring trust.” In practice, it means spreading regime propaganda.
Sept. 14, 2026
Trump’s AI Plan: No Guardrails Except a President Who Threatens the Companies That Disagree With Him
Category: Power Consolidation
Leaders of several of the companies building the most advanced AI—including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk—have called for slowing down the technology’s development. Donald Trump is confident that Americans need only one safeguard against AI-related dangers: himself.
CNN has the story:
President Donald Trump spent Monday angrily rejecting calls from AI industry leaders for more government regulation on their cutting-edge models, making clear in a daylong string of social media posts he considers outpacing China and preserving AI-driven economic gains a higher priority than addressing growing public concerns. ... Over four consecutive days, the president has continued to downplay the need for new safety checks. He said Monday the US already has “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, where he frequently posts AI-generated images and videos of himself. He said the administration had already prevented AI companies from doing “bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’” and singled out Amodei for “now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel.’”
Trump told the crowd at an AI summit in LA that he was genetically predisposed to understand the issue because his uncle taught at MIT. How much AI should be regulated is a legitimate policy question. Leaving it to the discretion of a narcissistic president who sings paeans to his own IQ is no answer.
Sept. 14, 2026
Putin-Linked Russian Oligarch Bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding Festivities
Category: Political Corruption
In May, Donald Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas. “It was really small, like, just really close friends,” he later said on his podcast. One of those friends was Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin who speaks limited English and was in China with Putin’s delegation in the days before the wedding. He attended the celebrations with a large contingent of Russian guests, and he helped pay for them.
ProPublica reported on Kremlev’s involvement:
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions. ... National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”
The couple confirmed the payments, calling them an “extraordinarily generous wedding gift” from a friend. The president first dismissed the story as “Not a big deal!” and said he doesn’t know Kremlev. Then, as Republicans like Sen. John Curtis called it “corruption,” he announced that his son had repaid Kremlev.
Kremlev’s background makes the arrangement more troubling. He reportedly joined the Night Wolves, the government-backed ultranationalist biker club, eventually taking a leadership role. The club brought him close to the man who now runs Putin’s security service. Ukraine has sanctioned him personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services. He is also heavily involved in Healthy Fatherland, a group run by his wife’s twin sister that Ukraine has sanctioned for its alleged role in abducting Ukrainian children from occupied territories. And he wants something from the Trumps. After the International Olympic Committee stripped his boxing association of its Olympic role, Kremlev wrote to the president asking him to look into the matter ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. After hosting Trump Jr. at a boxing event in Istanbul last year, the association announced that “this alliance will not remain symbolic.” Paying the money back after getting caught does nothing to change that.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Breathtaking when summarized in a single article.
I am still trying to understand why megarich people need to have other people pay for their weddings. The number of Russians in attendance speaks to how few actual friends the Trump children have.
This also explains why Trump didn't attend his own son's wedding. Security checks would have had to been done on every guest and either DJT2 didn't want his guests scrutinized or Big Daddy and his advisors realized attending a event largely composed of criminally corrupt Russian oligarchs would be political cryptonite and only underscore that "Russia, Russia, Russia" is no hoax.
Golly gee, doesn't she remind you of Melania… I'm sure she's a very nice lady and I know nothing about her, but everyone already knows that the sons are deeply seeking their father's approval and here it is, one step further.