Trump's War Presidency Attempts Regime Change in Venezuela in Violation of the US Constitution and International Law: An Executive Watch Roundup

Our early-January selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law

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The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), along with its flagship publication, The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch early in 2025. 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:

• Personal Grift

• Political Corruption

• Presidential Retribution

• Power Consolidation

• Policy Illegality

After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?

Jan. 3, 2026

Trump Strikes Venezuela, Picks Up President Maduro and His Wife to Stand Trial in New York, Without So Much as Notifying Congress
Category: Policy Illegality

There is no dispute that Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro is a bad guy, a brutal dictator who has kept himself in power by overturning election results. But the decision to use the U.S. military to remove such a leader unambiguously requires the approval of Congress, which has the sole power to declare war. Donald Trump did not do so.

The Washington Post reports:

Top lawmakers on congressional intelligence committees split along sharp partisan lines Saturday on the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Republicans and Democrats agreed that Maduro was not the country’s rightful leader, but broke over President Donald Trump’s unilateral action and the question of what’s next for Venezuela.

Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Congress should have authorized any use of military force.

“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, but I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos,” Himes said in a statement. “The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.” …

In recent months, U.S. lawmakers have voted down multiple measures, backed by Democrats and a handful of Republicans, that sought to limit Trump’s ability to conduct military action in Venezuela and the Caribbean without the approval of Congress.

If the reason it is acceptable for the U.S. to remove a foreign leader is because he is an authoritarian who lacks democratic legitimacy, there is an obvious contradiction is prosecuting this attack through authoritarian means.

The closest historical parallel for this action is George H. W. Bush’s war to capture dictator Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989, without any formal authorization from Congress, violating the terms of the Constitution. Yet even Bush briefed member of Congress ahead of time, and they generally approved of the action. Trump dispensed with even this small courtesy, not even bothering to notify Congress before striking, further usurping an arguably superior branch’s constitutionally-granted powers.

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Dec. 31, 2025

Trump Vetoes Bills Depriving States of Congressionally Approved Funding to Exact Revenge for Opposing Him
Category: Presidential Retribution

Donald Trump’s first two vetoes of his second term fit his pattern of using his power, not for the interests of the American people, but for personal revenge against his political opponents. In one case, this is Trump’s openly admitted motive, and in another, it is an accusation made against him by his own Republican ally.

The New York Times provides an overview:

In messages to Congress released Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he blocked the bills to save taxpayers’ money. But the president has grievances against the Miccosukee Tribe and the state of Colorado, leading lawmakers to accuse Mr. Trump of blocking the bills because of political disagreements. Throughout his second term, Mr. Trump has carried out a campaign of retribution against political opponents, law firms, universities and specific individuals.

In Florida, Mr. Trump suggested the veto of the bill to expand Miccosukee Tribe land was tied to its opposition to his immigration agenda. The Miccosukee Tribe joined a lawsuit earlier this year to block the administration from constructing an immigrant detention center in the Everglades nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. And in Colorado, Mr. Trump has attacked the state’s leaders over the imprisonment of a former state election official, Tina Peters, for interfering with the 2020 presidential election.

“Despite seeking funding and special treatment from the federal government, the Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” Mr. Trump wrotein a message to Congress. “My administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding projects for special interests, especially those that are unaligned with my administration’s policy of removing violent criminal illegal aliens from the country.” …

Ms. Boebert slammed the president’s veto, arguing he was “denying clean drinking water for 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado.”

“I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability,” she said in a statement.

Ms. Boebert was a vocal supporter of releasing the Epstein files, drawing backlash from the White House.

It is within the president’s power to veto legislation—just as Congress has the power to override his veto. What makes this a misuse of power is the obviously corrupt motive, which offers only the thinnest pretense of being connected to national interests rather than Trump’s interests.

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Dec. 27, 2025

The Trump Administration Disses the Separation of Church and State This Christmas
Category: Policy Illegality

There is a long tradition of the United States government releasing secular and non-sectarian messages for the Christmas season, carefully avoiding anything that appears to officially favor one religion over another. This is yet another norm broken by the Trump administration.

The Washington Post reports:

Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration posted messages from their government accounts hailing Christmas in explicitly sectarian terms, such as a day to celebrate the birth of “our Savior Jesus Christ.”

The Department of Homeland Security posted three messages on social media Thursday and Friday, twice declaring, “Christ is Born!” and once stating, “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.” One DHS video posted on X displayed religious images, including Jesus, a manger and crosses.

Those social media posts are “one more example of the Christian Nationalist rhetoric the Trump administration has disseminated since Day One in office,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement. “Our Constitution’s promise of church-state separation has allowed religious diversity—including different denominations of Christianity—to flourish in America. …

In 2015, as Trump campaigned for president, he told voters, “We’re going to be saying Merry Christmas again.” A decade later, officials in his second term have gone further in overtly seeking to align the administration with Christian advocacy in both language and action.

These examples are not simply personal messages from politicians but official communications from the agencies they head. And they are not general greetings to the faithful but advocacy for a specific religious doctrine. But key supporters of this administration are Christian nationalists who believe in tearing down the separation of church and state, and this is a small step toward that goal.

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Dec. 27, 2025

Trump’s Cabinet Members Illegally Refuse to Testify Before Congress
Category: Power Consolidation

The main theme of the Trump administration’s abuse of executive power is its attempt to take away power from Congress. That includes the power to exercise “oversight” by monitoring the activity of the executive branch. Crucially, this means denying the right of Congress to obtain information from executive officials by requiring them to testify in hearings.

The Washington Post reports:

When Sen. Bill Cassidy announced in February that he would vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary despite concerns about his skepticism of vaccines, the Louisiana Republican said he had secured a commitment from Kennedy to testify before the committee Cassidy chairs once a quarter if asked.

But Kennedy has not come before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee since May—and he’s hardly the only administration official who has frustrated senators by failing to show up.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has rebuffed requests to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers behind closed doors earlier this month on the administration’s controversial strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea. But they have not testified in public about the strikes, as some Democrats have demanded. …

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has asked Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), the committee’s chairman, to summon half a dozen Trump administration officials to testify. They include Russell Vought, in his capacity as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; and several banking regulators who testified in December before the House Financial Services Committee but have not come before the Senate.

“Many of these folks are required to come before Congress on a regular basis as a matter of law—and they’re not even doing the legally required parts, much less the additional oversight that’s sometimes needed when there are big issues pending,” Warren said.

As this report notes, the appearance of some of these officials before Congress is required by law. For others, it was a promise made as a condition of Senate confirmation. But in any case, this is a violation of the spirit of the Constitution as a system in which the executive is check by the legislature and answers for its actions to the people’s representatives.

An executive branch that does not answer to Congress—in the literal sense of answering questions—is a branch with unchecked and unlimited power.

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Dec. 24, 2025

Abandoning All Pretense, Trump Threatens to Pull Licenses of TV Stations Simply for Criticizing Him
Category: Presidential Retribution

When the Trump administration intimidated ABC into briefly suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show in September, the supposed rationale was a comment made by Kimmel about Charlie Kirk. But Trump immediately pivoted to a wider complaint that it should be illegal for TV hosts to criticize him. Over the holidays, he repeated this, targeting Stephen Colbert.

CBS News reports on the case—while they are still allowed to:

President Trump said early Wednesday that TV broadcast licenses should be revoked if newscasts and late-night shows are almost entirely negative about him and the GOP.

“If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social in the wee hours of the morning.

The post came minutes after the president criticized “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert. … “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!” …

The FCC is an agency that issues eight-year licenses to individual broadcast stations, many of which are owned and operated by television networks. Carr said during a Senate hearing earlier this month that it’s “not formally an independent agency.” Axios reported that during Carr’s testimony, the word “independent” was removed from the agency’s website.

The revocation of the independence of the FCC (and other regulatory agencies) means that any random statement by the president has to be taken as a serious threat to the freedom of speech of his targets. Notice also that he has dropped any fig leaf or rationalizations, openly declaring that he should enjoy special state protection against criticism.

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Dec. 23, 2025

The Wall Street Journal Finds That $1 Million Is the Going Rate for Crooks to Obtain Fast-Track Pardons From Trump
Category: Personal Grift

Trump’s signature abuse of executive power is the way he has issued pardons. The Constitution gives the president a very broad power to grant clemency, but Trump has used this power in a way that clearly is not guided by justice or the public interest but is instead is casual, impulsive, and open to corrupt influences.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an exposé on the going price for a Trump pardon:

As a string ensemble played in the background, Donald Trump Jr. walked up with lobbyist Ches McDowell to chat with the president. Trump Jr. at one point pulled McDowell forward to shake the president’s hand, according to a livestream broadcast. After they went inside, McDowell took the president aside to discuss a pressing issue, according to people familiar with the matter: One of his clients was seeking a pardon.

The client was Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance. That afternoon, the president agreed to sign Zhao’s pardon, the people said.

Zhao was one of the beneficiaries of a new, informal path to presidential pardons that has become a feature of Trump’s second term, which allows some clemency applicants with deep pockets or politically connected lobbyists to circumvent the traditional pardon process.

The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers. …

Administration officials and lobbyists describe two playbooks that have emerged. There is the official track, which involves pardon czar Alice Johnson, Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin and the White House Counsel’s Office. Applicants usually go through one of the three, and ultimately White House counsel Dave Warrington reviews the application and makes a recommendation to Trump. The two men meet every few weeks to discuss pardons, administration officials said.

The second track is riskier but can be much faster. If an applicant can find Trump at Mar-a-Lago or a White House event and ask for a pardon directly, Trump is often inclined to be helpful, administration officials said—particularly if someone says the magic words: “unjust persecution.”

The very haphazardness of Trump’s approach to pardons, the lack of a formal and transparent process vetted by lawyers, makes it inherently corrupt. If pardons are granted just because the right person happened to get the president’s ear, then the president’s ear will naturally become a valuable commodity to be bought and sold.

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Dec. 19, 2025

Trump’s Pardons of White Collar Criminals Deprives Their Victims of Just Compensation While Filling His Pockets
Category: Personal Grift

Pardons for those who have been convicted of crimes may be justified if they have reformed—and paid restitution to their victims. But one consequence of Donald Trump’s haphazard and corrupt pardons is that they deprive victims of compensation that has already been granted to them by the courts.

The Washington Post reports:

At least 20 people who have received clemency from Trump so far this year—cutting their sentence short, restoring their civil rights after imprisonment or allowing them to avoid prison altogether—were also forgiven of financial penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars. Some of these offenders owed money to real-life victims of fraud. Marian Morgan, for example, was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 34 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme and was ordered to pay $17.5 million to dozens of investors, most of which remains unpaid. In 2021, she filed a statement in court saying, “I want to pay restitution to my victims so they know I am truly sorry for the damage I caused.” But in May, Trump commuted her sentence “to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.” …

But unlike any other modern president, Trump has wielded his executive power to reward dozens of allies while condemning their prosecutions as politically motivated. He has routinely ignored Justice Department guidelines that state pardons should be given only to offenders who are five years past their conviction or imprisonment. The guidelines also say that accepting responsibility for their crimes and paying restitution to their victims should be “important considerations.” Presidents are not bound by the criteria because the Constitution gives them the near-absolute power to grant pardons for federal crimes.

The effect of these pardons is that Trump—himself a convicted white collar criminal—is making white collar crime legal, and profitable. In the process, he is hurting the victims of these crimes all over again.

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Dec. 18, 2025

Trump’s Dirty Tactic to Put Voter Rolls Under Federal Control in a Possible Bid to Disenfranchise Americans Who Don’t Vote MAGA
Category: Power Consolidation

In Article I, Section 4, the Constitution gives state governments authority over federal elections, with a supervisory role for the U.S. Congress. The federal executive has no role at all. This has not stopped Donald Trump from attempting to place elections under his control. The latest news is that the administration put forward a secret agreement with Republican-led states to do this.

Stateline has a full report:

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a confidential draft agreement to more than a dozen states that would require election officials to remove any alleged ineligible voters identified during a federal review of their voter rolls.

The agreement—called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU—would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution.

A Justice Department official identified 11 states that have expressed an interest in the agreement during a federal court hearing in December, according to a transcript reviewed by Stateline. Two additional states, Colorado and Wisconsin, have publicly rejected the memorandum of understanding and released copies of the proposal.

The 11 states “all fall into the list of, they have expressed with us a willingness to comply based on the represented MOU that we have sent them,” Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, said at the hearing. He spoke at a Dec. 4 hearing in a federal lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against California, which has refused a demand for the state’s voter data.

Neff’s courtroom disclosure, which Stateline is the first to report, comes as the Justice Department has sued 21 states and the District of Columbia for unredacted copies of their voter rolls after demanding the data from most states in recent months. The unredacted lists include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

This effort is concerning, not just because it violates the constitutional provision that puts voting laws under the control of state governments, but also because Trump administration officials have often repeated his fictitious claims about the 2020 election being “stolen”—even as Trump tried to steal that election by submitting slates of fake electors.

Donald Trump is a proven enemy of free and fair elections, and his administration’s takeover of state voter data is likely to undermine the integrity of our elections.

© The UnPopulist, 2026

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