Trump Commandeers the National Guard to Militarize the Immigration Police State: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our mid-June selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, along with its flagship publication, The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch earlier this year. This project, which is designed to track presidential abuses of power, has been meticulously documenting each illicit action emanating from the White House. (You can also find the tracker on ISMA’s website.)
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. We’re covering everything from the White House’s decision to implement yet another sweeping travel ban, to Trump’s weaponization of the military to enforce his domestic agenda, to his active obstruction of oversight at his detainment and deportation centers. And that’s just a sampling. We document many more of this White House’s abuses below.
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 do you take to be the most troubling, and why?
June 10, 2025
Trump Uses the Vast Authority Granted to Him by the Supreme Court to Once Again Issue a Travel Ban and Abuse His Immigration Powers
Category: Policy Illegality
Donald Trump has a genius for finding weaknesses in the American system. One of them is the way Congress has been eager to grant emergency powers to the president, particularly on immigration. Trump then takes those powers and stretches them to their breaking point, as in his most recent sweeping ban on immigrants.
When he issued a travel ban on citizens of Muslim-majority countries early in his first term, he did so by invoking Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows him to block any foreigner if he deems that their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” …
Finally, last week, he announced that he would block foreign students from receiving student visas to attend Harvard University and implement a travel ban on 12 countries, as well as restrictions on seven others. The travel ban took effect on Monday, just after midnight, and the legal framework for both orders was built on Section 212(f). …
Before Trump, both Democratic and Republican presidents used the 212(f) authority sparingly. It was typically employed in order to enforce United Nations sanctions or target individuals or groups associated with terrorism, human rights violations, drug trafficking, or specific international crises.…
The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision narrowly upholding Trump’s first travel ban made [the] shift clear. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that Section 212(f) “exudes deference to the President in every clause.” For that reason, the court refused to question the superficial national security rationale Trump provided for the travel ban.
When Justice Roberts writes about “exuding deference to the president,” I have to wonder whether that’s the law, or just him. The Roberts Court has allowed Trump to take a narrowly tailored emergency provision and turn it into an arbitrary and unlimited power that can be used to enact his prejudices.
June 9, 2025
Donald Trump Commandeers the California National Guard to Suppress Protests Against ICE Deportation Raids
Category: Policy Illegality
In response to relatively small protests in Los Angeles over the police state tactics of immigration enforcement, Donald Trump immediately issued an executive order commandeering troops from the California National Guard. California Governor Gavin Newsom argues that this order is illegal.
Time magazine looks at the issue:
To mobilize the National Guard, Trump invoked Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code, which allows for the federalization of the National Guard in cases of an invasion or a rebellion, or if the president is unable to execute the country’s laws with “regular forces.”
Section 12406, however, also states that “Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States.” Newsom confirmed that he did not request the deployment of the National Guard, making it the first time since 1965 that the National Guard has been activated to a state without a governor’s request.
In an open letter to Hegseth, Newsom’s office called the mobilization “a serious breach of state sovereignty” and requested that the Pentagon chief “immediately rescind” the order and “return the National Guard to its rightful control by the State of California, to be deployed as appropriate when necessary.” The Democratic Governors Association backed Newsom in a statement, saying: “It’s important we respect the executive authority of our country’s governors to manage their National Guards.”
The specific legal claims will go to the courts, but Trump’s intent is obvious. He’s taking the first small step toward transforming his immigration police state into a nationwide martial law—promising that “we’re going to have troops everywhere.”
June 9, 2025
Trump Prevents Congressmen from Performing Their Oversight Function by Denying them Access to ICE Detention Centers
Category: Power Consolidation
Under Trump’s direction, ICE is increasingly acting as a law unto itself, particularly with the recent arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka who accompanied members of Congress on an oversight visit to an ICE detention facility. Now ICE is illegally denying members of Congress their right to inspect those facilities.
The Guardian reports:
Democratic members of Congress from California and New York say that they were blocked from entering federal detention facilities over the weekend while seeking to inspect conditions and check on individuals detained during immigration raids and related protests.
In Los Angeles, the US House members Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez and Norma Torres each said that they were denied entry to the Metropolitan federal detention center, outside of which there had been anti-immigration customs enforcement (ICE) protests. …
In a video posted outside the building after they were turned away, Gomez said that their positions in Congress gave them the right to conduct oversight of the detention conditions and the welfare of the people detained.
See here for the specific wording of the law that mandates congressional access. More broadly, the right of legislators to observe the operation of the executive is crucial to the ability of Congress to exercise oversight and ensure that the executive is staying with the limits of the law.
June 7, 2025
In a Classic Authoritarian Move, Trump Threatens to Crush Musk if the Tech Tycoon Funds Democrats Now
Category: Presidential Retribution
The political break between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has had its predictable outcome. Where the administration once used government power to drum up business for Musk’s companies, now Trump is threatening to cut off his government contracts as retaliation for switching sides.
NBC News reports:
President Donald Trump on Saturday said there would be “serious consequences” if tech mogul Elon Musk funds Democratic candidates to run against Republicans who vote in favor of the GOP’s sweeping budget bill.
“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview, but declined to share what those consequences would be. …
“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the President,” he added. …
He also wrote on Thursday, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” referring to federal contracts with SpaceX.
Every authoritarian leader has wealthy and politically connected allies whose support he uses during his rise, only to turn against them once he gets into power. He turns on his old allies precisely because he once needed them—which makes them unacceptable competitors for power and influence.
These are the rules of the authoritarian system Trump is attempting to impose, in which government power in all its forms will be used to punish political opponents.
June 4, 2025
Trump Threatens to Scrap Columbia's Accreditation After the University Capitulated to His Previous Demands to Fight Campus Antisemitism
Category: Presidential Retribution
Columbia University led the way in caving in when Donald Trump began threatening it with the loss of government funds. So what is the university’s reward for compliance? A threat to their accreditation, which could block their students from receiving federal financial aid.
The BBC reports:
The Trump administration is looking to strip Columbia University of its accreditation over claims it violated the civil rights of its Jewish students. …
“Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid,” [Secretary of Education Linda] McMahon wrote in a letter on Wednesday, calling Columbia’s actions “immoral” and “unlawful.”
The letter informs the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which oversees Columbia, that Columbia “no longer appears to meet the Commissions accreditation standards” by its alleged violation of anti-discrimination laws.
In February, the Trump administration stripped Columbia of $400m in federal funding, alleging antisemitism at the campus. Columbia followed up by enacting campus rule changes demanded by the White House, including the re-organization of its Middle Eastern studies department.
The move was meant to appease the White House, but the deal appears to have had little impact.
Compliance did not protect Columbia; it made it more vulnerable. This result should convince universities and other institutions that Harvard’s response is the correct one. The best defense against this administration is firm and early resistance.
June 4, 2025
Trump Issues Executive Order to Invalidate Biden's Pardons and Other Policies Based on Conspiracy Theories Even as He Sells Pardons to Corrupt Politicians and Tycoons
Category: Presidential Retribution
If you wondered why Trump is suddenly talking a lot about autopens, here’s why. He has ordered an investigation of Joe Biden’s mental state while in office, partly as a witch hunt against the former president and his aides, but also as an attempt to invalidate every action of Biden’s presidency.
The New York Times provides the context:
In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge.
The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides. …
A central claim of the conspiracy theory, as described by Mr. Trump himself, is that Mr. Biden’s use of the autopen system—which reproduces a person’s signature to be affixed to official documents—can legally invalidate those documents.
Mr. Trump has claimed, for example, that some pardons Mr. Biden had made during his time in office were invalid because they were signed using an autopen. (There is no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon.)
Trump seems particularly interested in preemptive pardons issued by Biden to his aides, members of Congress, and other officials to shield them from Trump’s retribution. By searching for a pretext to declare these pardons illegitimate, he hopes to clear the way for politically motivated prosecutions.
May 27, 2025
The Administration Suspends Visa Interviews of Foreign Students Pending Vetting Rules of Their Social Media Posts to Ensure Ideological Conformity
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump’s war on Harvard—most recently, canceling $100 million of contracts—includes trying to ban it from sponsoring international students. That was blocked by a federal judge. But now, in the name of fighting antisemitism and anti-American sentiment on college campuses, the administration is suspending visa interviews for all international students till it works out new rules to vet their social media posts.
The New York Times reports:
The State Department is temporarily halting interviews abroad with foreign citizens applying for student and exchange visas as it expands scrutiny of applicants’ social media posts.
Mr. Trump this month said the U.S. government would no longer grant Harvard the right to enroll international students. On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Mr. Trump from moving forward with the action against Harvard and foreign students.
Many universities in the United States rely on foreign students to pay full tuition. Those students are responsible for a substantial portion of the annual revenues of many American universities. On some campuses, foreign students make up the majority of researchers in certain disciplines, mainly in the sciences.
Combined with previous canceling of funds for scientific research, the administration’s actions are a war on universities as such. This is an open attempt to punish those with ideological views different from MAGA orthodoxy, of course. But it is also an escalation of the war on higher ed. An authoritarian cannot tolerate any competing centers of knowledge, status, and influence. He has to either bring them to heel or to destroy them altogether.
May 27, 2025
Trump Sells a Pardon to a Rich Crook Who Paid a Million Bucks to Have Dinner With Him
Category: Personal Grift
In addition to pardons for fellow celebrity fraudsters whom Donald Trump regards as kindred spirits, he is now also flagrantly selling pardons to people who attend his fundraisers and invest in his business ventures.
The New York Times reports on the latest:
Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.
Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny. …
Still, weeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.
Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon.
The judge who sentenced Walczak had said “there ‘is not a get-out-of-jail-free card’ for the rich.” Well, there is now. Other presidents have issued fishy pardons, but they usually wait until their last days in office. Trump is openly selling them in the first months of his second term.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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I do wish someone besides Trump would occasionally be named as the 'doer' of everything. You think if Trump went away these actions and policies would vanish? Call out Steve Miller and the Heritage Foundation Fledglings, and others.
Power Consolidation. His abuses and usurpations can be fought and punished, if he cannot consolidate power in order to evade or suppress resistance and punishment.
NO KINGS. THE CONSTITUTION MATTERS.