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The president’s unfolding urban power grab — along with his ongoing attacks on mail voting, which he recently pledged to “get rid of” — have some observers fearing an even more worrying scenario: that the administration is laying the groundwork to deploy troops or law enforcement to the polls in key cities next year and in 2028.
How would those governors feel if National Guard troops from other states were ordered onto their streets, perhaps to patrol one of the 53 cities in those states with a higher murder rate than Washington’s? After all, if D.C. is in the throes of a crime emergency worthy of a militarized response — and you have no concerns that response might backfire — then why aren’t the good people of Jackson, Mississippi or North Charleston, South Carolina?
We asked them.
Less than a year into his second term, President Donald Trump and his appointees in the Department of Justice have already filed charges or launched investigations against a dozen of his political opponents, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and former President Barack Obama (D).
To keep loyalists at the helm of U.S. attorneys’ offices, President Trump and the Justice Department are exploiting loopholes and making extraordinary claims of presidential power that legal experts warn circumvent the appointment processes laid out by the Constitution and federal statutes.
From the Justice Department to the most peripheral federal agencies, Trump and his political appointees are weaponizing the bureaucracy to go after hundreds of the president’s political opponents and public officials who attempt to hold him accountable.
The recent actions of Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, serve as examples of how the Trump administration is weaponizing even the most peripheral parts of the government to go after the president’s opponents.
Recently revealed letters that Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to U.S. tech giants show Trump believes he can arbitrarily exempt companies from federal laws he doesn’t like — a monarchical assertion of power that threatens the rule of law, legal experts warn.
El Salvador’s recent disclosure to the U.N. undermines a key position DOJ lawyers have taken while defending Trump’s Alien Enemies Act removals and appears to contradict what senior Trump officials have told federal judges in sworn declarations.
The Supreme Court’s decision last week to curtail nationwide injunctions has forced those challenging President Donald Trump’s authoritarian power grab to explore other legal avenues.
In federalizing the California National Guard over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Trump is asserting broad powers that could be used against any state, legal scholars and national security experts told Democracy Docket.
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