Trump’s Anti-Immigration Crackdown Is a Ruse to Ban Foreigners and Harass Returning Americans Who Criticize Him or MAGA: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our mid-December selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), along with its flagship publication, The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch earlier this year. This project, designed to track presidential abuses of power as they are happening, has been meticulously documenting the illicit actions emanating from the White House.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. 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 is the most troubling, and why?
Dec. 18, 2025
Trump Illegally Renames Kennedy Center After Himself
Category: Policy Illegality
After illegally renaming the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, Trump has now gotten his sycophants on the board of the Kennedy Center to rename that august institution after him. But this, also, is against the law.
The Washington Post reports:
The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to rename the storied arts institution the “Trump Kennedy Center,” an unprecedented change for the U.S. presidential memorial that drew swift condemnation from Kennedy family members and Democratic leaders.
The Kennedy Center confirmed the vote in an email to The Washington Post. The law establishing the building designates it as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. …
Trump in February purged members of the board not appointed by him, installed loyalists—including several White House aides, second lady Usha Vance and Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo—and became its new chair. …
“Beyond using the Kennedy Center to reward his friends and political allies, President Trump is now attempting to affix his name to yet another public institution without legal authority,” the group of ex officio members said in a statement. …
The Kennedy Center is a public-private institution founded to be the nation’s cultural center and a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. Its founding statute mandates that the board “assure” that “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas” of the building. …
David Super, a Georgetown law professor, told The Post that such a name change would require Congress’s permission. “That statute is pretty unequivocal, and I can’t really find any loopholes in it that would allow this to happen,” he said in July.
Combine this with Trump’s claim that the vote was “unanimous,” but only after muting members of Congress on the Kennedy Center board who tried to raise objections. It is yet another expression of Trump’s complete contempt for Congress and defiance of its legitimate authority.
Dec. 18, 2025
Trump Lies to Troops Saying He’s Giving Them a Bonus From His New Tariff Revenues
Category: Political Corruption
In an otherwise inexplicable speech to the American people, Donald Trump promised to pay special bonus checks to members of the U.S. military. This raised the question of where the money was coming from and whether it had been appropriated by Congress. But don’t worry: Trump isn’t stealing the money, he’s just lying to us.
Politico explains:
President Donald Trump’s promise Wednesday to pay troops a “warrior dividend” bonus is actually a military housing stipend already approved by Congress, and not a generous new White House program.
The rebrand, confirmed by a senior administration official and two congressional officials, follows a pattern for the president, who has previously claimed credit for routine military pay increases that weren’t his doing.
The $1,776 per person bonuses, unveiled by Trump in his nationwide address Wednesday night, will be covered with funding approved in the Big Beautiful Bill that passed in July, according to the congressional officials and later confirmed by the Pentagon.
The payouts—which will cost roughly $2.6 billion—will be a “one-time basic allowance for housing supplement to all eligible service members,” said the official, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. …
Trump, in his speech, implied the money for the military bonuses was coming from new tariff revenue. But White House officials would not confirm that, and the congressional official said tariff revenues won’t have anything to do with the payments.
It would be a major abuse of power for Trump to spend money that hasn’t already been appropriated by Congress. It is a smaller abuse of power to take money appropriated for one purpose and “rebrand” it for another.
But it is also an abuse of power for the president to lie to the American people, brazenly and repeatedly—especially when he is doing so in order to buy votes with the taxpayers’ money.
Dec. 12, 2025
Trump Threatened to Withhold Federal Funds From Indiana Unless it Approved His Plan to Gerrymander its Electoral Map
Category: Presidential Retribution
Initially, it was just a rumor that Donald Trump was threatening to withhold federal funds from Indiana if its legislature didn’t approve his gerrymandered map to ensure GOP control of the House after the midterm elections. Now, however, the lieutenant governor of Indiana has come out and confirmed it.
The Hill reports:
Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith (R) said Thursday the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding if state lawmakers rejected a new GOP-favored congressional map.
“The Trump admin was VERY clear about this,” Beckwith wrote in a now-deleted post on the social platform X.
“They told many lawmakers, Cabinet members and [Gov. Mike Braun] and I that this would happen,” he continued. “The Indiana Senate made it clear to the Trump Admin today that they do not want to be partners with the WH. The WH made it clear to them that they’d oblige.”
His post followed a warning from the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action, a sister organization of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state,” the organization wrote earlier Thursday in a post on X, ahead of the state Senate’s vote on a measure to approve new congressional lines.
“Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop,” the group continued. “These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”
To their credit, Indiana’s Senate ignored the threats, but this story reveals something fundamental about Donald Trump’s abuse of executive power: he consistently treats things that belong to the people as things that belong to him.
Federal funding that goes to the National Guard, to build and maintain roads, and to other infrastructure projects is the taxpayers’ money, to be used on behalf of the taxpayers’ interests. Yet Trump treats all federal funding as a campaign slush fund he can use to bribe or blackmail people for his own personal and political advantage.
Dec. 12, 2025
Trump Illegally Tries to Pardon a Supporter Convicted of Tampering With Voting Machines Under State Law
Category: Policy Illegality
Donald Trump has granted a pardon to Tina Peters, who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in an attempt to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Most reports have been dismissive of this pardon, describing it as “symbolic,” since Peters was convicted of a state crime in Colorado, not a federal crime.
A report from Colorado Newsline (republished by News from the States, a progressive-leaning nonprofit focused on state-level news) may be more accurate in assessing the pseudo-pardon’s potential for mischief:
The document, which appears to be dated Dec. 5, says it grants “a full and unconditional pardon” for “those offenses she has or may have committed or taken part in related to election integrity and security during the period January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021.”
The pardon applies to Peters’ conviction on state charges, [her lawyer Peter] Ticktin said. The charges related to Peters’ role in a 2021 security breach when she was the Mesa County clerk. …
“She didn’t commit any federal offenses,” Ticktin said in an interview with Newsline. “The only thing that she could be pardoned on are state offenses, because that’s all that are out there.” …
Ticktin applied to the Trump administration last month for a pardon. He followed up last week with a letter to Trump in which he detailed his argument that Trump has the power to pardon Peters. He says the Constitution’s references to the United States apply to the individual states as well as the country as a whole, concluding that the president “has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States.” …
Ultimately he expects the matter to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 6-3 conservative majority has sided with Trump at an unusually high rate.
It is significant that Trump granted this pardon when Peters has only been charged with state crimes, and that he did so at the request of a lawyer who insisted it overturns her state-level conviction. It’s a legal Hail Mary that is unlikely to work, but the mere attempt is an abuse of power.
This is consistent with the Trump administration’s approach on many other issues: assert maximum power far beyond its proper limits—and just roll the dice, hoping the other branches will back down or the Supreme Court’s conservatives will allow the abuse. Win or lose, the Trump administration will never exercise any self-restraint in its claims to power.
Dec. 11, 2025
Trump Is Now Detaining and Harassing Returning Americans Till They Submit to Warrantless Searches of Their Phones and Computers
Category: Policy Illegality
It has always been the case that attempts to target the rights of immigrants end up providing a precedent and an excuse to violate the constitutional rights of citizens. The latest example is a naturalized U.S. citizen detained by Customs and Border Patrol agents until they could browbeat him into allowing an unlawful search of his phone and computer.
Reason describes the case:
Last July, Wilmer Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Vermont, was returning from Nicaragua, where he had visited his mother and other relatives, when he was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for no apparent reason. Chavarria was held for more than four hours and released only after he finally agreed to let the agents search his smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer. The agents, who persistently pressured Chavarria to surrender his devices and the passwords for them, informed him that he had no Fourth Amendment right to resist. …
Chavarria, who is superintendent of Vermont’s Winooski School District, was understandably dismayed by the CBP’s assertion of that authority. “When he objected, he was told he had no Fourth Amendment rights at the border,” the complaint says. “Moreover, he was told he was behaving suspiciously simply by asserting those rights and refusing to consent to the device searches. His requests to contact his family and lawyer were denied during the detention.” …
Chavarria reflected on his experience in a recent interview with WPTZ, the NBC affiliate in Burlington, Vermont. “You feel like you’ve been abducted by a gang of aggressive, violent people who are trying to manipulate you and who are lying to you,” he said. “And while you are being abducted, you know that these people are capable of doing anything to you because they don’t care.”
As usual, this case takes advantage of an existing legal loophole: an overly broad “border exception” for the Fourth Amendment, which was supposed to allow the screening of physical goods for contraband but is now expanded to include vast amounts of digital information. These loopholes, when harnessed by a hysteria against a vilified target group, erode the rights of everyone.
Dec. 10, 2025
Trump Wants His MAGA-Controlled FTC Board to Use its Antitrust Powers for a Hostile Takeover of CNN by a Billionaire Tech Buddy
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump’s takeover of the Federal Trade Commission in March by firing the Democratic commissioners on the board has given him considerable personal power to meddle with antitrust enforcement. That, in turn, gives him a club to hold over the head of every big company in America, particularly media companies. He is now using that club to support a crony and to take revenge on CNN for critical coverage.
CNN reports on its own fate:
President Donald Trump inserted himself directly into the battle for control of Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday, saying, “It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” while deriding the network’s news coverage.
Trump’s comments during a White House roundtable indicated that he favors Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, WBD for short—though he did not mention Paramount by name. …
The Wall Street Journal reported that David Ellison recently “offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN.” The Journal cited “people familiar with the matter.” …
The president went on, claiming the news network spreads “poison” and “lies,” and emphasizing that he wouldn’t want CNN’s current leaders to stay in charge. …
Ellison, who donated nearly $1 million to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign last year, shifted with the political winds this year and forged close ties with Trump’s inner circle.
WBD CEO David Zaslav has resisted selling to Trump’s cronies, declaring, “When the government controls the news, that is the end of democracy.”
The regulatory powers of government agencies are only compatible with a free society if those agencies remain independent of partisan politics and direct presidential control—but Trump has insisted he must have total power, precisely so he can do things like this.
Dec. 10, 2025
Trump Drops Bribery Charges Against FIFA After it Cooked Up a ‘Peace Prize’ Specially for Him
Category: Political Corruption
Donald Trump has moaned about not being given the Nobel Peace Prize, so the head of FIFA, the governing body for soccer’s World Cup tournament held every four years, cooked up a “FIFA Peace Prize” to give him, in violation of FIFA’s rules about political neutrality. Afterwards, the Trump administration suddenly dropped all charges in a case that exposed widespread corruption within FIFA.
The New York Times reports:
Hernán López, who was the chief executive of a unit that was responsible for developing Fox’s sports broadcasting business in Latin America, was convicted in 2023 of money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors had said Mr. López conspired to pay off the heads of national federations to win the rights to broadcast two South American soccer tournaments.
But on Tuesday, Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, wrote in a letter to the judge who oversaw the case against Mr. López and the Argentine marketing firm convicted along with him, Full Play Group, that dismissing it was in the interest of justice. …
It was another dramatic swing in a case that arose from a Justice Department investigation into corruption by international soccer officials. Federal investigators began probing corruption at FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, in 2010, but the case burst into the open with a series of high-profile arrests in Switzerland in 2015.
The most chilling part of this story is when López’s lawyer excuses his bribes by saying, “South America has different cultural norms and customs of gift-giving than the United States.” In other words, corruption there is normal—and soon will be here, based on the precedents set by the Trump administration.
Dec. 9, 2025
Trump Wants Even Foreign Tourists to Submit their Social Media Posts for Scrutiny, a Naked Bid to Deny Entry to Critics
Category: Power Consolidation
The Trump administration has already been screening the social media posts of those who apply for student visas to ensure their ideological conformity. Now it is planning to do that for all foreign tourists.
The New York Times reports:
Travelers visiting the United States from countries like Britain, France, Germany and South Korea could soon have to undergo a review of up to five years of their social media history, according to a proposal filed on Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. …
This move from C.B.P. follows similar actions by the U.S. government to conduct social media reviews for some visa applicants, including seekers of the H-1B visas awarded to skilled foreign workers, as well as applicants for student and scholar visas. …
Bo Cooper, a partner at Fragomen, called the government’s new approach to social media screening a “paradigm shift” from when agencies used social media to verify specific facts, such as criminal activity.
“The new method involves looking at online speech, and then denying travel based on discretion and policy about the kinds of things that get said.” …
Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said in a statement that the mandatory social media disclosure and surveillance would “exacerbate civil liberties harms.”
“It has not proven effective at finding terrorists and other bad guys,” she added. “But it has chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travelers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues.”
This follows the Trump administration moving to revoke the green cards of prominent critics of Elon Musk’s X. Yet while the Trump administration imposes its own ideological tests on travelers and immigrants, it also making plans to block the H-1B visas for skilled workers who have ever “worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance, and online safety.”
This is billed as fighting back against European “censorship,” but it actually consists of taking sides in debates over what kind of moderation online platforms should offer—and taking sides in favor of the purveyors of misinformation.
Dec. 6, 2025
The DOJ Is Moving to Designate Non-MAGA Americans Engaging in Wrongthink as Domestic Terrorists
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump has issued a national security directive so broad and vague it can be used to designate any ideological opponent as a terrorist threat to national security. Now he is following up by having his attorney general compile a list of supposed “extremists” to target.
Independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports:
Attorney General Pam Bondi is ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo published here exclusively.
The target is those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.” …
In addition to compiling a list of undesirables, Bondi directs the FBI to enhance the capabilities (and publicity) of its tipline in order to more aggressively solicit tips from the American public on, well, other Americans. To that end, Bondi also directs the FBI to establish “a cash reward system” for information leading to identification and arrest of leadership figures within these purported domestic terrorist organizations. (The memo later instructs the FBI to “establish cooperators to provide information and eventually testify against other members” of the groups.) …
For months, major media outlets have largely blown off the story of NSPM-7, thinking it was all just Trump bluster and too crazy to be serious. But a memo like this one shows you that the administration is absolutely taking this seriously—even if the media are not—and is actively working to operationalize NSPM-7.
Klippenstein compares this to some of the post-9/11 excesses of the War on Terror, with the targets this time being our fellow citizens engaging in wrongthink. It is perhaps more closely comparable to the Red Scare and particularly Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations, when anyone and anything could be arbitrarily designated as “subversive.”
Nov. 24, 2025
Hegseth Wants Pentagon to Investigate Sen. Mark Kelly, a Veteran, for Reminding Military Servicemembers of Their Oath Not to Follow Illegal Orders
Category: Presidential Retribution
A hit dog will holler, and as evidence grows that Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth issued illegal orders to murder shipwreck survivors in the Caribbean, they have reacted by threatening anyone who points this out. Now Hegseth is stretching the power of military discipline beyond its breaking point in order to target a U.S. senator for his opinions.
CNN reports:
The Pentagon said Monday that it is investigating Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired US Navy captain, in light of “serious allegations of misconduct” the department has received against him, and could even recall him to active duty to face a court martial or administrative punishment.
The investigation comes as President Donald Trump has been pushing relentlessly for consequences for Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video they made reminding servicemembers of their duty to disobey illegal orders. …
Because Kelly was a senior officer who retired from the Navy, he is required to remain available for recall to the military by law. …
Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a CNN legal analyst, said that a court martial for Kelly is technically a viable option for the Pentagon because three different appellate courts have upheld that it’s constitutional to court-martial retired servicemembers.
But the Kelly case “is pretty powerful proof” of why that should not be an option, Vladeck said.
“Going all the way back to the Founding, we’ve been wary of the exercise of military jurisdiction over civilians—so much so that the Supreme Court has struck down statutes authorizing courts-martial of, e.g., former servicemembers; military contractors; and the dependents of servicemembers,” Vladeck said. “Retired servicemembers differ in that they remain at least theoretically subject to recall, but it still makes no sense to subject individuals to military jurisdiction in perpetuity just because, at some point in the past, they were on active duty.”
It’s no surprise that an administration that orders war crimes will also seek to use military discipline to suppress freedom of speech and infringe on the independence of a separate branch of government. But it shows the extent to which this administration is a thorough enemy of constitutional government.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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