We launched Executive Watch early in Trump’s second term, and it has been meticulously documenting this White House’s illicit actions ever since. 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?
Aug. 28, 2026
Hegseth’s Pentagon Secretly Employed a MAGA Influencer Who Was Attacking His Critics
Category: Power Consolidation
Pete Hegseth has spent over a year restricting the Pentagon press corps. All the while, he’s been quietly running a covert messaging operation on the side. Jennica Pounds—better known to her nearly one million X followers as “DataRepublican”—has been secretly working as a special government employee at the Pentagon since July, even while publicly attacking Hegseth’s internal rivals and critics without disclosing she was on the department’s payroll.
Mediaite reports:
Pounds’s Pentagon employment came to light after a bizarre incident in which she claimed she was being “set up” by the deep state—but it was revealed she merely botched a “scoop” she was being handed by a State Department official. Up until June, Pounds was a member of the credentialed Pentagon press corps. She had not disclosed her new gig with the Pentagon. … CBS News’ National Security Coordinating Producer Jim LaPorta also confirmed, “DoD: ‘Ms. [Jennica] Pounds serves at the Department of War as a Special Government Employee and is no longer a credentialed journalist at the Pentagon. Her PFAC (press credential) expired in June 2026, and she did not seek a renewal. She began working for the Department in July 2026.’”
IBTimes UK reports that Pounds isn’t the only Hegseth-friendly account facing scrutiny:
The episode has also renewed scrutiny of Adam D’Ortona, an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel with more than 100,000 followers on X who has criticised congressional Democrats and backed Hegseth’s push against diversity and inclusion programmes at the Pentagon.
D’Ortona was reported last September to be working inside Hegseth’s office. However, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said at the time he was not an adviser or spokesperson for the department. D’Ortona denied this week that the Pentagon pays anyone to “post stories,” and both the Army and Hegseth’s office declined to answer further questions about his role.
This is not a simple undisclosed-conflict story. Pounds used her platform to take shots at Hegseth’s own internal critics—including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom Hegseth has openly clashed—all while hiding that she was on his department’s books. Throttling access for actual reporters while secretly employing an “independent” influencer to fight his personal and political battles—that’s the Hegseth way.
Aug. 26, 2026
Wyoming’s Republican Governor Says DOJ Election Monitors Were ‘Aggressive’ and Exceeded Their Authority
Category: Power Consolidation
Trump’s electoral intimidation rollout is well underway. During Wyoming’s primary, two DOJ officials showed up at Laramie County polling places without notifying state or local election officials. They asked questions poll workers say went well beyond their legal authority, and they tried to examine vote tabulators and interview voters inside polling places.
WyoFile reports:
The chief election officer for Wyoming’s most populous county, Clerk Lee … voiced concern about the DOJ’s presence in the Laramie County polling places she oversees.
“Two individuals, identifying themselves as DOJ election monitors, informed our poll worker that they were here to monitor Wyoming’s Primary Elections,” Lee said. … “They did not offer their credentials until I requested they do so.” …
The monitors arrived at a busy time and asked questions, according to Lee, that appeared “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws. They included questions about the nature, length, and timing of poll worker training. Monitors requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired, and wanted to examine our tabulators.” When she learned that the monitors also planned to interview voters “to assess compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights law,” she denied that request. “We do not allow interviews to be conducted in polling places,” Lee said. “This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” her statement concluded.
Gov. Mark Gordon—a Republican certainly not known for reflexive skepticism of Trump’s DOJ—went further, saying the observers’ conduct “seemed to exceed” the authority Congress gave them and that he’s asked the state attorney general to look into it. Even Wyoming’s own U.S. Attorney reportedly wasn’t looped in ahead of time.
If this is the dry run for the 1,000-monitor midterm rollout, the DOJ’s claim that this is all about “promoting transparency” is already being undermined.
Aug. 25, 2026
The DOJ Threatens to Demolish the Kennedy Center If a Judge Won’t Let Trump Rename It After Himself
Category: Presidential Retribution
President Trump will do anything to get his name on the Kennedy Center. A federal judge blocked Trump’s audacious push to put his name on it earlier this year, ordering the signage removed. Now, the administration is making another attempt. During a mid-August meeting, the Trump-appointed board voted in favor of adding the phrase “Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump” to the end of the center’s formal name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and moved to rename the physical site as the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
This attempt has been challenged before the same court. But to ensure this time that the court rules in its favor, the DOJ is raising the stakes, essentially telling it: “approve the renaming, or watch it get demolished.”
CBS News reports:
The Trump administration said it may need to demolish the Kennedy Center if a plan to close the building for two years as part of a controversial renovation project pushed by President Trump and the organization’s board of trustees is blocked by a federal judge. In a Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said the center’s “dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit” conditions, in addition to millions in financial losses, put the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy in a “financial and structural death spiral” that will require it to close for renovations. The filing suggested that if the current renovation plans don’t move forward, the center could ultimately be replaced with something like “a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.” … “This is a not-so-subtle threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the President doesn’t get his way,” said attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky. “This is unconscionable, it is unbecoming of the Department of Justice to even put this in a filing, and we will answer in court.”
CNN adds a key detail on the money angle DOJ is leaning on:
An order blocking the Board from appropriately recognizing President Trump will cause donors to flee, financial contributions to dry up, and structural rehabilitation to stop. … There will simply not be the expertise or funding necessary to rebuild and renovate this decimated structure. The Trump Administration is ready to go but, without it, the Kennedy Center cannot be saved.
Translation: Nice Kennedy Center you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
Aug. 21, 2026
Pentagon Fires Stars and Stripes’ Top Editor and a Reporter for Defending the Paper’s Editorial Independence
Category: Power Consolidation
Stars and Stripes, a U.S. military newspaper meant to give news about the service to military families and personnel, has had its editorial independence backstopped by Congress since 1991, when lawmakers created an ombudsman position that would report directly to lawmakers. This was specifically meant to safeguard the paper from Pentagon interference.
Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t stopped Trump’s Pentagon from … interfering.
Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte were fired for “insubordination” weeks after telling CBS News that censoring the news U.S. troops receive represents a red line they would not cross. Max Lederer, the publisher who had just announced his retirement, was also pushed out. An active-duty Navy officer who Hegseth likes better has been installed in the newsroom’s senior leadership.
The Associated Press reports that this wasn’t the first time this year the paper’s independence took a hit:
[Slavin] received a notice of separation, as did publisher Max Lederer—who had just announced his upcoming retirement—and Middle East reporter Lara Korte, Slavin said. … In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job had been to safeguard editorial independence.
Slavin should be applauded for sticking up for the publication’s independence, which isn’t a courtesy that the department extends whenever it’s convenient, but a legal obligation it is currently violating by its actions.
Every such act of “insubordination” exposes this administration’s authoritarianism and moral bankruptcy. We need more of them.
Aug. 21, 2026
Trump Threatens a $5 Billion Defamation Suit Against a Think Tank Whose Report Exposed That the National Guard Has Failed to Lower Violent Crime
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank, published a report in July finding “no evidence” that Trump’s National Guard deployments have reduced violent crime. It also projected that deployments would cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion if extended through the end of the calendar year. The Trump administration’s response wasn’t to dispute the data but to threaten CAP with a $5 billion defamation suit unless it retracted the report and apologized to Trump personally.
The New York Times notes:
The threats against the think tank, the Center for American Progress, were Mr. Trump’s latest effort to use the legal system to punish critics for voicing unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment. …
On Monday, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Alejandro Brito, wrote a letter to the center warning that he would file the lawsuit if the group did not fully retract the report, which was published on its website on July 13. The letter … was addressed to the group’s president and chief executive, Neera Tanden. … Mr. Brito claimed that the report about the National Guard was full of malicious and false statements. He gave Ms. Tanden and members of her board until 5 p.m. on Friday to retract it and apologize to Mr. Trump. Ms. Tanden pushed back, saying in a statement that the center would “neither cower nor bend in the face” of legal action.
Whatever ultimately happens with the lawsuit, it has already performed its messaging function: it has sent a warning to other think tanks that reaching unflattering conclusions about the administration’s efforts can now mean a significantly costly legal and financial fight.
Aug. 21, 2026
The Trump Administration Is Using Taxpayer Money to Fund Anti-Immigrant ‘Independent Journalism’ in Europe
Category: Power Consolidation
Back in July, we flagged the Trump administration’s nearly $5 million grant program to bankroll far-right causes in Europe. The scheme has only grown: the State Department has now made more than $7.9 million available for the effort, including a new $1 million grant to build an “independent journalism consortium” that will produce U.S. taxpayer-funded, government-shaped coverage of European immigration policy.
To truly understand what the administration’s idea of “independence” is, read this Talking Points Memo reprint of a story from The Redoubt:
As part of a grant opportunity posted Aug. 18, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor announced it was looking for a partner—possibly including “[f]or-profit organizations or businesses”—that could help it “develop an independent journalism consortium in Europe.” According to the listing, the grant, valued at $1 million, will be awarded as part of a “cooperative agreement” just two weeks after the funding opportunity was first publicized. … However, a review by The Redoubt shows that the State Department has now made more than $7.9 million in such funding available, including a grant worth almost $2 million … for an analysis of how “foreign governments and their proxies weaponize migration.” …
The State Department envisions close collaboration between the Trump administration and the recipients of its largesse. Should the money be offered as part of a “cooperative agreement,” the department would insist on “substantial involvement” in the project, including the right to “approve key personnel.” … “The administration prioritizes democracy and freedom of expression,” the spokesperson said, “in the European region.”
In other words, the administration is dressing up state propaganda as press freedom. This is nothing less than an attempt to manufacture and amplify pro-Trump messaging and to help far-right parties like Germany’s AfD.
Aug. 20, 2026
Navy Weighs Stripping a Black Pearl Harbor Hero’s Name From a New Aircraft Carrier to Honor Trump, a Draft Dodger
Category: Power Consolidation
The future USS Doris Miller was supposed to become the first aircraft carrier named after a Black sailor and an enlisted service member. It was supposed to honor the heroic mess attendant who grabbed an anti-aircraft gun he’d never been trained to use during the Pearl Harbor attack, becoming the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross. Now the Navy is thinking of stripping his name from the ship and replacing it with Trump’s, which would represent the first time in history a Navy vessel has been named for a sitting president—not to mention a draft dodger who got a family doctor to certify that he has spurs in his heels and is therefore medically unfit to be deployed in Vietnam.
CNN reports:
The US Navy is working to rename an aircraft carrier under construction that was set to honor a Black sailor hailed for his heroic actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor, three sources familiar with internal discussions told CNN. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the Navy announced that the Ford-class carrier would be called the USS Doris Miller, recognizing an enlisted sailor who helped defend US forces from Japan’s attack.
It’s unclear what the Navy is seeking to change the name of the carrier to, though two of the sources said there have been internal conversations about renaming it to honor Trump. …
The Navy convened a renaming commission in 2025 under former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, to review how ships and other military assets were named. Phelan believes aircraft carriers specifically should be named only after presidents, Navy admirals, and consequential Navy battles, a person familiar with his thinking said. … The Navy commission came amid broader efforts in the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to remove names selected for what the administration considers diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes.
The Navy says Miller may get a Medal of Honor upgrade and have a different ship named after him. But there is no way to soften the blow: Miller, a Black war hero, is being asked to give way to a sitting president obsessed with naming monuments after himself.
Aug. 18, 2026
Trump’s DOJ Weaponized Baseless Allegations of Antisemitism to Target Universities, Whistleblower Confirms
Category: Presidential Retribution
A judge shot down the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Harvard, rejecting the government’s bid to withhold grant funding on grounds that it discriminated against Jews. Now, a DOJ whistle-blower has exposed what we frankly already knew: that the attack on Harvard and other universities was motivated by political animus rather than genuine concern about antisemitism.
MS NOW has the story:
The Trump administration’s findings that three Ivy League schools violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures, according to a whistleblower account provided to Congress.
The disclosure, by Haley Van Erem, a veteran Justice Department civil rights attorney, involves investigations into whether Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities broke the law by allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses. … The complaint said that after being informed that there was no evidence to support a finding of a Title VI violation based on antisemitism at Brown, a senior Trump administration official at HHS, Daniel Shieh, agreed that there was “not a Title VI violation,” but told Van Erem and other DOJ team members at the meeting that “there’s no way we’re going to get a letter of no violation cleared.” … “Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded,” the complaint says.
If the administration were interested in fighting antisemitism, it could speak out against the right-wing media ecosystem, where raw hatred against Jews is par for the course. But it would rather launch a baseless and politically motivated harassment campaign against universities to titillate its base and bring critics to heel.
Aug. 18, 2026
Trump’s DOJ Refuses to Give Up its Persecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Category: Presidential Retribution
Back in May, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, concluding that the government was engaged in vindictive prosecution after Garcia successfully challenged his wrongful deportation to El Salvador’s CECOT torture prison. But the DOJ is unwilling to accept defeat and let an innocent man return to his life. It is appealing the decision.
The Guardian reports:
In a filing to the US sixth circuit court of appeals, the justice department insisted that human smuggling allegations against Abrego are genuine—and not retaliation for challenging his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in March 2025. …
[The judge in the case, Waverly David] Crenshaw said the indictment’s timing, statements made by the recently confirmed attorney general, Todd Blanche, and sustained oversight by other top US justice department officials, had “thoroughly tainted” the case. In its appeal … the justice department accused the judge of “an unwarranted intrusion” into the government’s power—and demanded the appellate court reverse it.
“The evidence in the district court proved that charges were brought against Abrego Garcia because, in the view of career prosecutors, the evidence conclusively established that he had committed a serious crime, and not for any vindictive motive,” the justice department statement said. … Attorneys for Abrego told CBS News that the justice department’s appeal was “flat wrong.” In a statement, they said: “The indictment and prosecution of Abrego Garcia was, in fact, vindictive; the evidence before the district court established just that; and the proof was clear notwithstanding the DoJ’s refusal to call the actual decision makers, including AG Blanche, to testify under oath.”
What is truly chilling about Garcia’s persecution is that there is no political upside to it. He is not a critic of the administration or engaged in political activism. He is simply an ordinary man trying to make a living. But he is part of a scapegoated outgroup against whom Trump has declared a jihad and nothing will stop the president from using the full force of the state to make his point.
Aug. 17, 2026
The Trump Admin Plans to Send Out 1,000 ‘Election Monitors’ to Try and Access State Voter Rolls
Category: Power Consolidation
There are a lot of things Donald Trump won’t do to help his party win the 2026 midterm elections: he won’t direct his attention to improving the economy, he won’t stop using tariffs that make the economy worse, and he won’t get us out of his disastrous war of choice with Iran. But what he will do is continue to spread lies about election integrity and use the federal government to engage in a variety of election interference efforts.
The latest comes from Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon, who announced that DOJ would send out 1,000 election monitors for the midterm elections, while also complaining about their failed efforts to access state voter rolls.
Democracy Docket reports:
“We began our election security work almost as soon as I was sworn in last April. This is an ongoing duty and obligation,” Dhillon said. “The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has sent monitors to election hot spots, polling places to increase voter confidence to troubleshoot problems and we are doing that now. We just did it in the primary. We’re going to do it to the tune of approximately a thousand election monitors in the November election, and this is just something that DOJ does.” … Dhillon’s comments come as the department refuses to retreat from its sweeping voter roll campaign despite a steady stream of losses in federal court. DOJ has lost all 23 district court cases in which judges have ruled on its effort to use Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to force states to provide their full statewide voter-registration databases, including sensitive information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has also rejected DOJ’s position, and on Friday the full appeals court declined the department’s request to rehear the case. Dhillon suggested the Supreme Court could be next. …
Dhillon also made sweeping claims Monday about what DOJ says it has found in states that have cooperated with the department’s voter roll efforts. “We don’t know the scale of this problem because two-thirds of the states are refusing to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s efforts to help them clean up their voter rolls,” Dhillon said. “In the states that have cooperated with us, there are hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls, and there are tens of thousands of people who are not citizens on the voter rolls.” Dhillon did not identify the states or provide evidence supporting those figures during the interview. She also acknowledged that DOJ must conduct further verification before determining whether anyone actually voted illegally.
Election monitors are a good thing under any normal administration. But this one is a different story. Its relentless effort to push a voter-fraud narrative that it can’t back up with evidence—in court or anywhere else—is meant to subvert an election outcome it does not like. It wants not to fix existing problems but to create problems where none exist.
Aug. 17, 2026
Trump-Appointed Regulators Have Cleared His Crypto Business to Become a Bank Allowing Him to Further Line His Pockets
Category: Personal Grift
In the latest episode of Trump’s endless self-dealing, his crypto-friendly regulators have provided conditional approval for World Liberty Financial—the crypto firm that is the joint project of the Trump family and the Witkoff family—to become a trust bank. While a trust bank isn’t able to engage in the kinds of banking activities—taking deposits, issuing loans—it will be able to directly issue “stablecoin,” enabling the Trump family to earn even more on top of the fortune it’s already made: Trump personally earned more than $526 million last year from selling World Liberty-linked crypto tokens, plus another $263 million from selling equity in the firm to a group of investors led by a royal from the United Arab Emirates.
CNN explains that now he can go further to line his pockets:
World Liberty is celebrating the major milestone, while critics worry this is a new wrinkle on the classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse that will give corporations and foreign actors a new way to stealthily curry favor with the White House. Trump, his sons and other investors started World Liberty weeks before winning the 2024 election. After taking office, Trump appointed crypto-friendly regulators—some of whom have now blessed the firm’s plan to become a bank.
“Bank failures can be catastrophic, as we found out in 1929 and again in 2008,” Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told CNN. “It is quite precarious to have the president and his family invested heavily in one of our most important regulated industries at the same time as he has the power to hire and fire the regulators.” … “President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate and supervise his own bank,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement. “This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.”
Even before this decision, the Trump family crypto business was a profitable way to cash in on the willingness of Trump’s most gullible fans to splurge on Trump-branded projects, as well as a pipeline for political corruption on a massive scale. Until now, World Liberty has relied on a third party, BitGo, to issue and custody its stablecoin, splitting the proceeds. The trust charter lets the firm cut out that middleman and keep the revenue for itself.
Aug. 16, 2026
Trump Is Trying to Screw Up the Census Yet Again to Disadvantage Blue States and Minorities
Category: Power Consolidation
Back in July, we flagged that the Trump administration would try to redefine who “resides” in the U.S. for census purposes, excluding certain immigrants from population counts used for congressional apportionment. Now there’s an actual draft rule in the works: Talking Points Memo has obtained the Commerce Department’s draft, which confirms the plan. The rule hasn’t been formally proposed yet, but the draft removes any doubt about what’s coming.
Talking Points Memo reports:
Lawful permanent residents, “approved asylees” and “approved refugees” would still be counted at their defined U.S. residence. “All other citizens of foreign countries,” the draft states, would not be counted at all.
Redistricting Online, covering the same document, adds that the rule would also ban questions about race and ethnicity:
Ending collection of race and ethnicity data would remove the block-level demographic detail used to draw districts and to litigate claims under the Voting Rights Act. The Commerce Department submitted the underlying rulemaking request in June 2026, and the proposal remains in White House review. ... The rule has not been published in the Federal Register, and no public comment period has opened.
Excluding millions of immigrants from the count used to allocate congressional seats and federal funding would be an unprecedented break from two centuries of census practice. And stripping out race and ethnicity data would gut the tools courts and researchers use to detect discrimination in redistricting. Both changes happen to serve the same partisan interest to shift political power away from the diverse, immigrant-heavy states and districts that tend to vote against the president’s party.
Aug. 13, 2026
Trump’s Treasury Department Is Deleting an Anti-Corruption Database, Making it Harder for Future Administrations to Go After Pardoned White-Collar Criminals
Category: Policy Illegality
Donald Trump’s second administration has already turned into a paradise for financial crime; he cut back enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and has pardoned plenty of white-collar criminals. But the president is clearly not content with turning a blind eye to corruption while he is in office. Now his Treasury Department is shutting down a registry of shell-company ownership to make future enforcement efforts by local law enforcement or future administrations much more difficult.
The Bulwark reports:
This is an anti-corruption database that Treasury is by law required to maintain, so that law enforcement can more easily “follow the money” when investigating crimes. Even worse, the Trump administration will also destroy all the data it has already collected, so that no future presidential administration or local police department can use it, either. “It’s like Trump ordering the deletion of the FBI’s entire fingerprint database,” former congressman Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a champion of the 2021 law that created the corporate registry, told The Bulwark. …
The result, financial experts say, is that law enforcement officials will have fewer leads available when tracking down fraudsters and cartels. “Before today, bad actors probably thought that there was still a chance of being caught by the reporting,” said Richard Berner, codirector of New York University’s Volatility and Risk Institute and former director of Treasury’s Office of Financial Research. “Now there’s zero chance.”
Presidential pardons don’t cover civil actions or state prosecutions. With this action, Trump will make it even harder to pursue future consequences for business crimes committed by corporations, individuals, or rich families (once they are out of power).
Aug. 13, 2026
Trump’s DHS Investigates the Protesters, Not the CBP Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti
Category: Presidential Retribution
Just days after CBP agents taking part in the out-of-control immigration enforcement “Operation Metro Surge” shot and killed Alex Pretti, DHS opened investigations—not into the murderers but into local organizations opposing Trump’s inhumane deportation agenda.
The New York Times has the story:
The target was not the Border Patrol agents who had killed Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old government nurse, in late January. Instead, it was several left-leaning political organizations — labor unions, a climate change group, socialist collectives — that investigators believed had provided help and money to what they described as the “violent opportunists and agitators” on the street, according to newly released government documents.
As part of their inquiry, the documents show, homeland security officials used an array of invasive tactics during the first half of this year to gather information on many groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes, crossing the line that has traditionally stood between investigating criminal activity and political dissent. … The documents further detailed an expansive covert surveillance operation in which undercover agents spied on protesters and organizers at meetings held online, as well as in libraries, parks and churches, taking down not only what they said, but also their names and sometimes license plate numbers. The undercover agents also infiltrated group chats on Signal, listening as activists discussed coming demonstrations and their political opinions.
The administration’s refusal to investigate the masked killers in their employ, together with their obstruction of state and local investigations, was already bad enough. But now it is using Stasi tactics to go after citizens exercising their constitutional rights. There is a name for such a government, and it starts with “A.”
Aug. 12, 2026
Trump Wants the DOJ to Again Prosecute the Reflecting Pool ‘Vandal’ After His Own U.S. Attorney Conceded That a Crony Contractor Botched the Paint Job
Category: Presidential Retribution
At the end of July, it looked as if the saga of Trump’s repeated claims of vandalism at the reflecting pool had finally come to an end, as even Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney and his lackey, admitted that the government’s own evidence showed that the peeling paint was caused not by vandalism but by the shoddy quality of the work by a contractor who was picked without any competitive bidding. But the president, it appears, is not tired of embarrassing himself yet.
CBS News reports:
White House officials have asked the Justice Department to weigh whether it is possible to bring a new criminal case against David Hearn, the former Olympian who was accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, after federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment against him earlier this month, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had charged Hearn with felony destruction of government property, accusing him of causing more than $1,000 in damage to the sealant that was recently installed at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool.
Earlier this month, however, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment without prejudice, meaning the case could be brought again, citing new information that the damage was caused by a “botched installation” by a contractor, not vandalism. President Trump criticized the decision, writing on Truth Social that there “may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I don’t know what she was thinking?”
Perhaps the only thing in DC more tattered than the poorly installed pool lining is the president’s ego when he can’t get his insane conspiracy theories validated in court.
Aug. 10, 2026
The DOJ Dropped Its Corruption Case Against an Indian Billionaire After Trump’s Personal Lawyer Dangled a $10 Billion Investment
Category: Political Corruption
During the Biden administration, the Department of Justice brought charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani for wire fraud and securities fraud in connection with a foreign bribery scheme. That legal case survived into the Trump administration … until Adani hired a new legal team headed by one of President Trump’s personal lawyers. That team made a pitch to DOJ lawyers to drop the case that, shockingly, included reference to a proposed investment in the U.S.
The charges were dropped soon after. Though DOJ and Adani have denied any direct exchange, the judge assigned to the case tore into the dismissal process as irregular and unusually opaque.
CBS News reports:
In a scathing 47-page ruling, Garaufis took aim at Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general, who he said bears sole responsibility for trying to dismiss the case. “The irregularities in the decision to dismiss the indictment are concerning,” Garaufis wrote. “On the current record, McCotter appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment. The fact that McCotter came to this decision largely in collaboration with defense counsel, and seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or the attorneys from the Department, SEC, and U.S. Attorney’s Office who brought the case, appears to be highly unusual.” … McCotter made the determination after he and other government officials met with McDonald, Giuffra and Andrew DeFilippis of Sullivan & Cromwell, sources previously told CBS News. McDonald has since been nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Two career prosecutors who were involved in the case withdrew from the matter after the motion to dismiss was filed. Additionally, politically appointed officials—the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and McCotter—were the only signatories on the motion to dismiss. McCotter initially pushed back when Garaufis first started raising questions about the motion to dismiss the case, prompting the judge to order Adani last month to provide answers to the court on whether there was any sort of quid pro quo arrangement. Adani ultimately told the judge no such arrangement existed.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this story isn’t the dismissal itself. It’s the fact that a billionaire’s lawyer was confident enough in the lawlessness and corruption of the current administration to feel comfortable openly making this kind of offer. (Bribery and obstruction charges against five other defendants in the case remain pending; the judge has ordered DOJ to justify those dismissals separately.)
Aug. 10, 2026
Trump Orders National Guard to Stay in DC Through End of Term Ignoring the Tab to Taxpayers and Lackluster Crime Reductions
Category: Power Consolidation
One year on from Donald Trump’s initial decision to put thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of the capital, the president has decided to extend their stay for the entire duration of his time in office. The federal government has much more direct control over the DC National Guard than that of other states.
The New York Times has the story:
The National Guard deployment, now 4,636 troops from 23 states and territories, has been extended until President Trump’s last day in office. A $292 million federal contract was recently awarded for building “apartment-style lodging units” for the troops. … The National Guard, the operation’s most visible component, is also almost certainly the most expensive. According to data that the Trump administration gave Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the deployment is expected to cost $1.4 billion from October 2026 until the end of the president’s term—on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have already been spent.
The effectiveness of the deployment is less straightforward. A June report from the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, found that the Guard had likely contributed to a decrease in property crimes—motor vehicle theft, for example, is down more than 50% year to date. But the deployment seemed to have barely any effect on violent crime, which includes murder, robbery and assaults with weapons. Robbery and homicide declined at roughly the same rate before and after the Guard arrived. This year, violent crimes in Washington are slightly above this point in 2025, driven up mostly by a large increase in assaults.
In other words, at best this is an expensive, unnecessary and useless move since it does nothing to protect Washingtonians from violent crime. At worst, it turns the Guard into a militarized force at Donald Trump’s disposal to mobilize for dangerous and antidemocratic purposes.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Thank you for compiling this!
Sending only 1,000 election monitors feels like not very many. But as with all things this administration does, spectacle is the point. ICE in Minnesota drew eyeballs. Me thinks the plan is to make one city the focus of election monitors and fraud allegations they will surely make, and use the resulting media spectacle as grounds to claim wider fraud nationally.