Trump Targets His Own Aides for Speaking Out Against His Stolen Election Lie: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our mid-April selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
As The UnPopulist’s regular readers know, we launched Executive Watch, a new project that tracks presidential abuses of power, earlier this year. We are actively building a one-stop, comprehensive, fully searchable database that anyone who wants to keep track of all the executive abuses emanating from this White House can do so with the click of a button. (You can also find the tracker on the website of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, our publisher.)
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in the Executive Watch. We’re covering everything from Trump’s egregious defiance of a court order compelling him to bring back an innocent man deported and condemned to a Salvadoran gulag to his make-believe invocation of an “emergency” in order to ram his disastrous tariff agenda down Americans’ throats without authorization from Congress. But we’re not just covering his high-profile abuses—we’re also tracking ones that are flying under the radar, such as his decision to direct the heads of the DOJ and Homeland Security to investigate his own former aides who challenged his “stolen election” conspiracy. After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses do you take to be the most troubling, and why?
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:
April 13, 2025
The Trump Administration Is Openly Defying the Supreme Court's Order to Bring Home Abrego Garcia After Erroneously Deporting Him to a Salvadoran Gulag
Category: Policy Illegality
The Trump administration illegally deported an innocent man to a brutal prison in El Salvador. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s order requiring the administration to “facilitate” his return and release. After days of delay, the administration is now openly defying the court.
CNN reports:
“The Trump administration insisted Sunday that it is not required to work with officials in El Salvador to secure the return of a man mistakenly deported to the country, days after the Supreme Court endorsed a federal judge’s directive that U.S. officials must “facilitate” bringing him back stateside. …
The assertion, made in court papers by Justice Department lawyers, comes after US District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday ordered the administration to “take all available steps to facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison last month.”
Donald Trump also made this clear in a meeting with El Salvador’s strongman ruler, Nayib Bukele, who said, “Of course I’m not going to do it.” Trump went on to say he is planning to send U.S. citizens to the same prison.
At stake here are the ancient protections of habeas corpus and due process. The administration is insisting is that they can seize anyone from the streets, send him to a foreign prison without any process at all, then declare him outside the reach of the U.S. courts.
Ask yourself if any of us is safe under these conditions.
Yesterday, the White House published on X an obscene post taunting The New York Times and Maryland’s Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen who visited Abrego Garcia:
April 10, 2025
Trump Abuses 'Emergency' Power to Set Tariffs by Autocratic Whim
Category: Policy Illegality
How is it that the Constitution gives the president the power to raise and lower tariffs and then make special exceptions and change the trade rules daily according to his whim? The answer is that it doesn’t, and a conservative group is actually challenging this in the courts.
The New York Times reports:
“In what appeared to be the first tariff-related lawsuit against the Trump administration, the founder of Simplified, Emily Ley, argued that President Trump overstepped his authority in February when he first imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods. …
The complaint filed on behalf of Ms. Ley, in Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida, … argued that Mr. Trump was circumventing Congress by unlawfully using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose the tariffs. The law gives the president the broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency.
In its complaint, the organization argued the law does not give Mr. Trump the power to impose tariffs by simply declaring that trade deficits constitute a national emergency, and if he is allowed to do so, he “will have nearly unlimited authority to commandeer Congress’s power over tariffs.”
The Constitution gives Congress the power to set tariffs. Since the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930, Congress has delegated this power to the president, often in foolishly vague ways. Donald Trump is abusing these powers to create the trade autocracy we’ve all been living with recently.
April 9, 2025
Trump's Executive Orders Target His Own Former Aides for Challenging His 'Stolen Election' Conspiracy Theories
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump formally and publicly ordered top officials to investigate his own former aides to punish them for criticizing him and contradicting his claims when they were in his own administration.
According to The New York Times:
“Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first term and anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House. …
The executive orders reflected Mr. Trump’s desire for political payback. Mr. Trump has fixated on punishing—among others—elected Republicans and officials in his administration who have defied him or later opposed him.
Mr. Trump has also sought to rewrite the history of his defeat in 2020 and has continued to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him. Mr. Krebs, leading the agency tasked with protecting election machinery from foreign interference, shot down many of Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, and Mr. Trump fired Mr. Krebs days after his loss. Mr. Trump has continued to harbor deep resentments against the agency.”
Trump did this by executive order precisely because he wants to “send a message” to all of his opponents that no one is safe. He can go after anyone who opposes him.
Philip Bump notes that this also is an attempt to criminalize opposition to Trump’s “stolen election” claims: “It is a statement from the most powerful person in the country that the federal government will be deployed to monitor compliance with his worldview.”
March 30, 2025
Trump Is Stacking the Press Pool with Loyalists and Crushing the Independence of the White House Press Corps
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump has been trying—and succeeding—in breaking the independence of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA). His goal is to make the reporters who cover the White House entirely dependent on the president’s favor.
CNN has the latest:
“In the Trump administration’s latest assertion of power over the press corps, the White House intends to take over the seating assignments in the press briefing room, according to a senior official. …
In February Trump banned The Associated Press, a foundational part of White House coverage for more than one hundred years, from press conferences and other events. Then [White House Press Secretary Karoline] Leavitt said the White House would pick the “press pool” reporters who travel with the president and attend small-scale events with him, thereby stripping the association of its historic role organizing the pool.
In recent weeks, the White House has invited hyperpartisan pro-Trump websites and relatively low-rated TV networks into the pool. …
All of the disruptions have pointed in the same predictable direction: Toward media coverage that supports rather than scrutinizes the administration’s agenda.”
This is a violation, not of the law or the Constitution, but of longstanding norms under which the White House respected the independence of the media. But the WHCA decided not to fight to protect the Associated Press, and its reward is that Trump is making it even more irrelevant.
March 25, 2025
Trump's Unconstitutional Executive Order Tries to Usurp State Control Over Election Law
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump issued an executive order demanding new election rules that would make it harder for many citizens to register to vote. Constitutionally, he cannot set these rules by decree—but he can threaten to punish states that don’t adopt them.
The Associated Press reports:
“President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive action to overhaul elections in the U.S., including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day. … It threatens to pull federal funding from states where election officials don’t comply. …
Voting rights groups have expressed concerns that the requirement could disenfranchise people. An estimated 9% of U.S. citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have proof of citizenship readily available, according to a 2023 report by the Brennan Center for Justice and other groups.
There are also concerns that married women who have changed their names will encounter trouble when trying to register because their birth certificates list their maiden names. Such hiccups happened in recent town elections in New Hampshire, which has a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.”
This will face legal challenges because the Constitution gives state legislatures, not the president, the authority to determine the “times, places, and manner” of elections. But Trump is constantly trying to exceed his constitutional authority and daring the courts to restrain him.
March 24, 2025
Trump Toady Briefly Canceled a Program Handing Social Security Numbers to Newborns in a Hospital to Spite Maine's Governor
Category: Presidential Retribution
Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek just admitted to canceling a program to enroll newborns at a Maine hospital in fit of pique at the state governor standing up to Donald Trump.
This is a single detail buried in a much longer New York Times article:
“[T]he Social Security Administration briefly ended a contract that had allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to sign their children up for a Social Security number at the hospital, instead requiring them to do so in person at an office. Mr. Dudek said he had ordered the move after watching Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, clash with Mr. Trump at the White House. He quickly reversed that decision, as well as another to end electronic death reporting in the state.
‘I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,’ Mr. Dudek said in the interview. ‘I screwed up. I’ll admit I screwed up.’”
This was temporary, and Dudek admitted it was wrong. But it’s the sort of thing, taken in the larger context, that will warn other political leaders that if they’re not “real cordial to the president,” they—and their hapless constituents—risk the wrath of his toadying subordinates.
March 13, 2025
A Chinese Scammer Is Seeking a Pardon from Trump in Exchange of Investing in His Crypto Fund
Category: Personal Grift
Donald Trump already dropped SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) charges against a Chinese cryptocurrency scammer who invested in Trump’s own crypto venture. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump family has been in talks with the shady crypto exchange Binance, whose CEO is seeking a pardon.
Here is the original report, but if you can’t get behind the paywall, try this summary from Mother Jones:
“The Trump family has allegedly been discussing a possible investment in the crypto exchange Binance—a deal that, especially in light of Binance’s multi-billion-dollar valuation, would raise a host of conflict-of-interest questions. The discussions were first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, which also reported that Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, is simultaneously seeking a presidential pardon after pleading guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws. …
Among other accusations, the U.S. government charged that the company had helped users evade sanctions against Russia, Iran, and Cuba. A Reuters report found that Korean hacking groups, investment frauds, and drug networks all had used the exchange to move money. …
According to the Journal’s report Thursday, the possibility of bringing on the Trump family as investors was first raised by Binance, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend who was recently named as the US special envoy to the Middle East, has been involved in the discussions. Witkoff has known Trump for decades, and last year his son, Zach Witkoff, founded the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto company. The Journal reported that an administration official denied involvement by Steve Witkoff in any Binance talks.
The Journal reported that one source indicated that Binance may be seeking to follow the path blazed by crypto investor Justin Sun, who was facing a civil fraud investigation by the SEC under the Biden administration. Last fall, Sun invested $75 million into the World Liberty Financial platform—triggering an $18 million payday for Trump. Last month, the SEC announced it was halting its investigation into Sun.”
It’s past time for an investigation of how cryptocurrency has instead enriched a whole class of con artists—and provided the perfect medium for thinly disguised bribes to high officials. But Trump is considering doing the opposite—selling pardons to a crypto huckster.
March 5, 2025
Musk Usurps the Power of the Purse from Congress but Republicans Can Apply for Relief from Funding Cuts
Category: Policy Illegality
The Constitution gives Congress the “power of the purse,” the ability to set government spending. But Donald Trump set DOGE loose to cut off funding to programs and entire agencies. Congress is now reduced to begging for permission to have some say in the process.
CNN describes the scene:
Republicans pushed Elon Musk on Wednesday in a pair of private meetings to move his efforts to slash federal spending and the federal workforce through Congress, as lawmakers vie for a seat at the table in the sweeping effort to overhaul government. …
The meetings come as multiple GOP lawmakers have been making the case to their leadership behind the scenes for weeks that Musk needs to consult more with Congress about the programs DOGE is working to eliminate and the scope of the cuts. …
To help address that, Musk gave out his cell phone number during the closed-door meeting to GOP senators and told them he wants to work more closely with them, according to a person familiar with the matter. …
“What we got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said.
Musk is giving his phone number to GOP lawmakers so that they can ask him to restore funding to their districts—and naturally Republicans can get “Elon relief,” but not Democrats. The executive branch is supposed to have to beg Congress for money—but now it’s the other way around.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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The lawlessness coming from this administration is staggering. Chris Krebs is a patriot and was a faithful civil servant. But this of course means he should be persecuted by the convicted felon whom 77 million decadent and selfish voters who chose to send back to the WH.