Trump Tells Harvard to Recalibrate Along MAGA Lines or Lose Federal Funding: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our early-May selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
Earlier this year, The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, along with its flagship publication, The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch, a project designed to meticulously track presidential abuses of power. We assessed that building a comprehensive resource chronicling the illicit actions emanating from this White House would be one of the most important initiatives that a venue covering authoritarianism could take on. So that’s what we did.
There isn’t just one way to access this resource. You should bookmark the Executive Watch section page, where every abuse of power is published as an individual entry, and the entries are arranged in a continually-updated chronological scroll. Also, you should bookmark this post in which we sort and list each entry under our 5 P categories:
You can also find the tracker on the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism’s website.
Below is our biweekly selection of recent entries posted in Executive Watch. We’re covering everything from Trump’s attempt to coerce Harvard into adopting MAGA-friendly policies or lose federal funding to one of his top officials construing criticism of Trump’s mass deportation policies as aiding and abetting terrorism. But we’re not just covering his high-profile abuses—we’re also tracking ones that are flying under the radar, such as the president’s lackey at the FCC, who proudly donned a golden Trump head lapel to work, threatening to strip a broadcaster of its license for being too critical of the administration’s studied refusal to bring back a man it wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran gulag.
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses do you take to be the most troubling, and why?
Before we get to the roundup, Tuesday, April 29th marked Donald Trump’s 100th day in office. He had vowed to be a dictator on day one but only for a day. Unfortunately, we’re more than 100 days in and his attempt to establish a dictatorship continues. Give the full essay a read:
April 21, 2025
Trump's Unlawful Campaign to Revoke Visas of International Students for Minor Offenses Is Designed to Spread Fear
Category: Policy Illegality
As part of its assault on Harvard, the Trump administration has threatened to revoke the university’s ability to sponsor international students, using the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program as a political weapon in the same way it is now trying to use the IRS.
But this is just part of a broader attack on international students, whose visas and legal status are being revoked arbitrarily and illegally, for offenses literally as small as a traffic violation.
CNN reports on lawsuits challenging these actions:
By CNN’s tally, more than 1,000 students and graduates have had their visas or statuses revoked, undermining their ability to remain in the U.S. and continue their studies. Cases have ranged from high-profile instances involving alleged support of terror organizations to relatively minor offenses, like years-old misdemeanors.
While some affected students have brought individual cases, at least two federal lawsuits filed in courts in Georgia and New Hampshire aim to represent large swaths of students at once—more than a hundred in each. …
The lawsuit acknowledges some of the plaintiffs have faced criminal allegations or charges, but none have a criminal conviction. None have violated the restriction that requires them not to be convicted of a violent crime carrying a sentence longer than one year, the lawsuit says. … “DHS’s act of unlawfully terminating SEVIS records appears to be designed to coerce students, including each Plaintiff, into abandoning their studies and ‘self-deporting’ despite not violating their status.”
The kicker in this story is that the students “are identified using pseudonyms ‘due to fear of retaliation by Defendants,’” that is, retaliation from the government. Many foreign students bring their talents to America precisely because we offer the protection of the rule of law—a protection they can no longer be take for granted.
Update: On Aug 25, faced with all the lawsuits, ICE abrubtly restored the revoked visas, but only temporarily. Joseph F. Carilli, a Justice Department lawyer, told a federal judge in Washington that immigration officials had begun work on a new system for reviewing and terminating the records of international students and academics studying in the United States. Until the process was complete, he said, student records that had been purged from a federal database in recent weeks would be restored, along with their legal status. This only means more uncertainty and anguish for helpless foreign students.
April 19, 2025
Trump’s FCC Head Threatens to Revoke Comcast's Licenses Over Unfavorable Coverage of Abrego Garcia's Deportation to El Salvador’s Gulag
Category: Power Consolidation
The Trump administration has criticized NBC News and MSNBC for failing to provide sympathetic coverage of his arbitrary and lawless banishment and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So Trump’s FCC Chairman followed up by threatening to revoke broadcast licenses held by the networks’ parent company.
Deadline has the details:
FCC chairman Brendan Carr suggested that Comcast may be violating its broadcast licenses after MSNBC declined to carry a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon in which the administration continued to defend its decision to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
Carr’s comments are the latest example of the Trump administration threatening, implicitly or explicitly, a news outlet over its editorial decisions.
In a post on X, Carr claimed that Comcast was ignoring “obvious facts of public interest,” suggesting that they were portraying Garcia as “merely a law abiding U.S. citizen” and not reporting on his alleged MS-13 gang affiliation.
“Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it,” Carr wrote.
The FCC’s power to decide if broadcasters are acting in “the public interest” has always posed a risk of partisan censorship, which the agency’s independent status is supposed to mitigate. But Trump has been undermining the independence of such agencies in his quest for autocratic power.
April 18, 2025
Trump Administration's Campaign of Retribution Threatens Scientific Journals Not on Board with MAGA Science
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Trump administration’s campaign to bring universities to heel is now followed by legal threats against scientific journals, issued by interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin—who is up for confirmation by the Senate, in case anyone wonders if they can do anything about this.
Science provides the context:
The Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has sent multiple journal editors letters asserting their publications are “partisans in various scientific debates” and asking for responses to a variety of questions. Meanwhile, the Trump administration plans to cut funding for two open-access, peer-reviewed journals published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) and Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)—according to a leaked draft of an internal 2026 budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services.
The letter, first reported by MedPage Today, is signed by federal prosecutor Edward Martin Jr. A version addressed to the medical journal CHEST was circulated widely on social media yesterday and the journal confirmed its authenticity. Science has learned that another journal has received a nearly identical letter. …
The prosecutor’s letter makes reference to U.S. regulations, stating that journals have a “position for which they are advocating either due to advertisement (postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations).” It asks journal editors to respond to questions such as “How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?” and “Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?” Responses are expected by 2 May, it adds.
Martin has issued a series of letters on matters unrelated to publishing that Democrats have argued use the threat of legal action, including prosecution, to “intimidate government employees and chill the speech of private citizens.” Martin’s letter to journals touches on a common accusation leveled by people affiliated with the Trump administration, such as new National Institutes of Health Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, who has argued that journals (including Science) were biased against certain viewpoints during the COVID-19 pandemic. This claim has received pushback from journals.
It’s hard to imagine what the administration is trying to accomplish by issuing vague legal threats against lung doctors—except that Donald Trump seems to blame mainstream science on Covid for his loss in the 2020 election. I am sure threatening doctors will prevent the next pandemic.
April 17, 2025
Treasury Official Ask IRS to Rethink Audits of the Pillow Guy and Trump's Other 'High Profile Friends'
Category: Political Corruption
It’s good to be a friend of the president. While Trump orders the IRS to review and possibly revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a White House official has reached out to the IRS to intercede on behalf of Mike Lindell, a major Trump supporter who peddled conspiracy theorists to explain Trump’s 2020 defeat.
The Washington Post reports:
A Trump administration official in March asked the IRS to review audits of two “high profile” friends of President Donald Trump, including MyPillow chief executive and conservative political personality Mike Lindell, according to two people familiar with the request and records obtained by The Washington Post.
David Eisner, a political appointee at the Treasury Department, wrote to senior IRS staff on March 6 that Lindell had received his second audit letter in two years. A week later, Eisner sent another email on behalf of Kansas state Sen. Rick Kloos (R), who runs a Topeka thrift store and coffeehouse he claims is a nonprofit.
Eisner used the phrase “high profile friend of the president” to describe Eisner and Kloos and wrote that each was “concerned that he may have been inappropriately targeted.”
Tax experts say the outreach on behalf of a Trump political allies is highly unusual and represents a sea change in how political appointees engage with the nonpolitical tax agency.
“That’s so inappropriate,” said Nina Olson, who served as the national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019. “In my 18 years as the national taxpayer advocate with over 4 million cases that came into the Taxpayer Advocate Service, in that time with taxpayers experiencing significant problems with the IRS, I have never had a Treasury official write me about a case.”
This is a small trial balloon. The Harvard case is a larger one. But the Trump administration is demonstrating the direction it wants to go. The apparatus of the government will not be deployed according to impartial rules but used to benefit Donald Trump’s friends and harm his enemies.
April 16, 2025
Trump Alters His 'Deal' with BigLaw and Wants to Extort Legal Services for Himself and His Allies
Category: Power Consolidation
When BigLaw firms made deals with Donald Trump under the threat of presidential retribution, their excuse was that they were merely agreeing to do what they already did: donate free legal services to uncontroversial causes. But Trump is, predictably, demanding more.
The New York Times reports:
When some of the nation’s biggest law firms agreed to deals with President Trump, the terms appeared straightforward: In return for escaping the full force of his retribution campaign, the firms would do some free legal work on behalf of largely uncontroversial causes like helping veterans.
Mr. Trump, it turns out, has a far more expansive view of what those firms can be called on to do.
Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals. …
And he has hinted that he sees the promises of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services that he has extracted from the elite law firms—including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher—as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes. …
White House officials believe that some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations, according to the two people.
This is an attempt to consolidate Trump’s power by creating a vast slush fund of free legal services for his political causes, gained by extortion. But: “It is unclear whether the firms even signed formal written deals spelling out the terms, or if they were essentially handshake agreements.”
Some of our nation’s supposedly sharpest lawyers were so naïve that they made a deal with Donald Trump and assumed that someone who was already illegally abusing his power would keep his end. Instead, he is altering the deal. BigLaw should pray he does not alter it any further.
April 16, 2025
Trump Threatens to Nix Harvard's Tax-Exempt Status if it Fails to Embrace His Ideological Agenda
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump has been using the specter of antisemitism as an excuse to impose ideological control over universities by threatening to cut off federal funding. Columbia University caved, but Harvard has resisted—so Trump is escalating by threatening their tax-exempt status.
CNN has the scoop:
The Internal Revenue Service is making plans to rescind the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, according to two sources familiar with the matter, which would be an extraordinary step of retaliation as the Trump administration seeks to turn up pressure on the university that has defied its demands to change its hiring and other practices.
A final decision on rescinding the university’s tax exemption is expected soon, the sources said. …
The administration already has blocked more than $2 billion in funding from the nation’s oldest university, which is fighting the White House’s policy demands, citing the constitutional right of private universities to determine their own teaching practices.
The Trump administration has threatened numerous colleges across the U.S. with funding cuts if changes in school policy weren’t made, and Harvard’s resistance appears to mark the first time an elite university has rebuked the White House over those demands.
It is hard to decide which part of this power grab is more egregious: the attempt to exert political control over the universities, or the attempt to make the IRS into a partisan instrument of intimidation against anyone who defies the president.
April 15, 2025
Trump's Counterterrorism Czar Wants to Prosecute Critics of Mass Deportation for 'Aiding and Abetting' Terrorists
Category: Presidential Retribution
If the Trump administration can declare someone a gang member or a terrorist without evidence, what can they do to anyone who speaks out for those victims? We got our answer when a top counterterrorism official suggested on a cable news show that they are violating the law.
Mediaite describes the clip:
White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Seb Gorka accused critics of mass deportation of being “on the side of terrorists.” He even went so far as to suggest those critics are breaking the law by “aiding and abetting” terrorism.
Gorka appeared on Tuesday’s edition of Rob Schmitt Tonight on Newsmax, where he addressed the legal and political dustup centering on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. …
Gorka went on to say President Donald Trump loves America, unlike “the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens on the side of the terrorists.” …
“And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?” Gorka asked. “Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”
This is the kind of red meat Gorka used to dish out to his audience as a talking head. But these threats are more than just bluster when they come from the White House senior director for counterterrorism, implying that the targets of “counterterrorism” are his political opponents.
April 14, 2025
Trump Threatens to Send U.S. Citizens to El Salvador's Gulag
Category: Policy Illegality
Since he has gotten away (so far) with disappearing immigrants to a prison in El Salvador, Donald Trump is taking the next logical step: making plans to send U.S. citizens there. What part of the Constitution does this violate? Basically, all of them.
CBS News offers an analysis:
President Trump’s administration is studying current laws to see if they are able to send U.S. citizens who commit violent crimes to prisons in foreign countries, the president said this week in his Oval Office meeting with El Salvador’s tough-on-crime President Nayib Bukele. …
“Sending American citizens to serve their sentences in a prison outside of the United States would violate the U.S. Constitution,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. And sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador specifically “would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution” prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, she said.
Mr. Trump said the U.S. can send criminals abroad for “less money” than housing them in the U.S. The president told Bukele he'll need to build “about five” more facilities to house “homegrown” criminals—meaning American citizens—in El Salvador. The Trump administration has sent hundreds of migrants whom they allege without concrete evidence are gang members, although some of those cases are playing out in court. …
Incarcerating U.S. citizens abroad would be almost certainly unconstitutional because “they wouldn't be able to, presumably, get habeas corpus, or be able to file petitions for habeas corpus,” said Stanford Law professor Bernadette Meyler.
Habeas corpus means recourse for challenging one’s conditions of or reasons for confinement.
Further, under Article One of the Constitution, only Congress can write the statutes that determine punishment for federal crimes.
The tally: This violates the 5th, 8th, and 14th Amendments, plus Article I. At the least.
On the one hand, Trump has only talked about doing this but hasn’t done it yet. On the other hand, maybe it’s a good idea to raise a ruckus before he does it.
Trump claims he is only going to do this with prisoners convicted of heinous violent crimes—but given that he has already lied repeatedly about the immigrants he has sent to El Salvador, we should not believe that he will stop with only one group of people.
April 14, 2025
Trump Wants the FCC to Revoke CBS' Broadcast License for Running Stories Critical of Him
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump is openly declaring that news coverage he doesn’t like is “illegal” and should be punished by revoking his critics’ broadcast licenses.
CNN has the story:
On Sunday night, he depicted 60 Minutes, the most-watched newsmagazine in the country, in similar terms, writing, “They are not a ‘News Show,’ but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as ‘News,’ and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing.”
He also wrote that CBS “should lose their license” after the network aired two stories on Sunday—one about Ukraine and another about Greenland. The CBS network is not licensed by the FCC, but local stations owned by CBS are. During the 2024 campaign, Trump said many times that networks he disliked should be stripped of their licenses.
He has repeated the call twice since taking office, and CBS has been the target both times.
These social media posts specifically directed Trump’s order to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Considering Trump’s rejection of the independence of executive agencies like the FCC, it’s clear that Trump will eventually expect this order to be carried out.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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I would say that the threat to use the FCC against CBS is of greatest interest to me as the most blatant threat against freedom of the press. Still a lot of the others are examples of implicit or explicit attacks on freedom in general.