“The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity.  The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.”

– Bertrand Russell

Though these words reflect on the Nazi Party’s ascent to power in Germany nearly a century ago, the astute among us find them all too fitting to modern America.^[1]  History does not exactly repeat itself as the old adage claims, but it certainly does rhyme.  The exact circumstances may differ from time to time, but the human desires behind them remain the same.  And while Trumpist America is not quite Nazi Germany, the parallels are too chilling to ignore.

If too many of us continue to fail to heed the warnings, if we do not halt the corruption of our constitutional order and its protection of our cherished freedoms, then Donald Trump will become America’s first tyrant king since we declared independence from King George in 1776.

This is part three of the “America is Becoming a Dictatorship.  Here’s Why” series.  If you missed either of the previous two parts, it’s worth reading them in order.  This series is a fact-based briefing for all Americans on what’s happened to undermine the constitutional rule of law and democracy in the United States in the first months of the second Trump administration.  The end of this article features a list of cited sources for further reading.  You are encouraged to review these more detailed accounts of events and confirm these findings for yourself.

Links to the previous articles in this series:

• Part I: Dismantling the Government
• Part II: Loyalizing the Government

Weaponizing the Government

As covered previously in this series, the guardrails which once protected America from an authoritarian presidency are now gone in the executive branch.  And the real fraud investigators have been diminished in number and authority, while fake investigators at DOGE pretend to uncover fraud, waste, and abuse.

The guardrails stood in place in his first term.  Trump was (largely) surrounded by professionals loyal to the Constitution above all.  We previously discussed the case of former FBI Director Comey as one example among dozens.  They rightly served with constitutional fidelity above all else.

But in a few weeks into his second term, the convicted felon that is President Trump crippled the FBI and the Department of Justice with politically-motivated layoffs and subversion tactics.  As if damaging the efficacy of our top national institutions of law and order were not bad enough, Trump has corrupted and transformed them into his personal weapons.  And he’s taking aim at all who stand in the way of serving his autocratic ambitions.

On numerous occasions during his second presidential campaign, Trump vehemently vowed to abuse his power to exact revenge on his “enemies” if re-elected.^[2]  Vengeful rhetoric like this reveals a menacing figure with no remorse, no conscience, and neither the interest nor the comprehension required to be a real president in a functioning democratic republic.  Instead, his own rhetoric proves him to have a mindset more like that of a dictatorial thug.  And his own record of abusing power demonstrates beyond any doubt that he’s not just all talk: his every impulse has been to attempt to wrest autocratic power for himself at all costs.^[3][4][5][6]  This pattern shows no sign of abating.  On the contrary, it continues to worsen in the absence of guardrails now.  Trump has even clearly stated he wanted to be a dictator “on day one” in an interview during the 2024 presidential campaign.^[7]

Reasonable, well-informed minds concluded that Trump is too delinquent in character and too dangerous to be trusted with anything of importance, most of all preeminent executive power in the White House.

And yet, on Election Day 2024, a slight majority of the American electorate nonetheless voted for the delinquent criminal.  Way too many Americans fell for the right-wing propaganda spewed forth by Trump and his allies in both government and the media.  His voters handed Trump, a genuinely convicted criminal, a “get out of jail free” card.  And they handed him a license to fulfill his dystopian promise to transform the United States into his own corrupt dictatorship.

The Many Crimes of Donald Trump

Before we continue, a review of Donald Trump’s criminal history is in order.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon.  This is an indisputable fact.

The evidence that Donald Trump committed the plethora of crimes he’s been charged with is abundant, clear, and damning.  His felony convictions are evidence that our justice system works, no matter how many liars on social media, in podcasts, and on network TV have falsely claimed otherwise.  Trump is also the first convicted criminal to have ever been elected President in American history.

A New York grand jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.  He orchestrated a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress potentially damaging information for his 2016 election campaign, concealing payments including $130,000 paid to an adult film star he’d had sex with (while married to Melania Trump).^[8][9]

Trump was also found liable in court for both the sexual abuse and defamation of a woman he’d repeatedly and maliciously slandered after she justifiably accused him of raping her in the 1990’s.^[10][11]

In the state of Georgia, Donald Trump and 18 of his associates were criminally charged with 41 felony counts which include: racketeering, perjury, forgery, witness tampering, and – wait for it – conspiracy to commit election fraud in a bid to overturn the 2020 election.  Ironically, the man who made baseless accusations of being the victim of election fraud is the one who actually tried to commit election fraud.  Trump and his indicted allies were caught in the act of threatening state officials and election workers in order to coerce them into committing election fraud on behalf of Trump.  When the threatened officials and staffers refused and did the right thing instead, they and their families had their phone numbers, emails, and residential addresses doxed (publicly released without their consent).  They endured thousands of death threats and other hateful and disgusting messages as well as property damage from Trump’s supporters.  Their lives were upended, their jobs ruined, and life became a living hell for them for a long time.^[12]

On a federal level, the DOJ criminally indicted Trump on four felony counts including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and witness tampering for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including his incitement of the January 6 insurrection.^[13][14]  On January 6^th, 2021, Donald Trump incited a mob of supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol.  An orchestrated criminal insurrection ensued, led by members of several groups of white nationalists (white supremacists with hard nationalistic or even fascist politics) and other right-wing extremists.  Many of the assembled 2,000 protesters violently assaulted the police, broke into the Capitol building, and damaged property.  They explicitly threatened to murder Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and various other Senators and Representatives.  As many participants later stated under legal questioning, they committed these crimes because they felt certain that Trump directed them to commit them.^[15]

In a separate case, Trump was also federally charged with 37 felony counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, including the illegal retention of classified information, obstructing justice, and perjury, among other crimes.  Trump illegally kept documents related to U.S. nuclear weapons, the nuclear capabilities of foreign nations, and documents from White House intelligence briefings including details of U.S. and other nations’ military capabilities.  He was alleged to have shown off the documents to people who did not have security clearances to review them.^[16][17]  He later tried to conceal that he had them from not only law enforcement but from his own lawyers who were trying to cooperate with the authorities.  Trump even attempted to have video evidence of his possession destroyed, prompting the additional charges of obstructing justice.^[18]

When Donald Trump was reelected in November 2024, the majority of these court cases had not yet concluded.  Except the two cases that concluded with Trump found guilty on all counts, the remaining cases were quickly and prematurely halted.  Conservative judges, like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (whom Trump appointed in his first term) have argued that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, and cannot be held accountable for them except by the political process of impeachment.^[19]  The Constitution itself notably says nothing about whether presidents, sitting or otherwise, can be charged with crimes.  Kavanaugh and other adherents of this idea argue that the presence of the impeachment process in the Constitution somehow implies that impeachment is the only constitutional tool for removing a sitting president from power.  It has as well long been the Justice Department’s tradition to not indict a sitting president.^[20]  The remaining cases were further delayed when the Supreme Court ruled in the summer of 2024 that, no matter the severity or quantity of crimes he may commit, a president, sitting or former, cannot be held criminally accountable for any which are deemed part of his official duties.^[21]  While this hypothetically leaves a sitting president open to criminal indictments of a personal or unofficial nature, the apparent vaguery inherent in how to discern the official from the personal arguably leaves open the possibility a president can claim unofficially committed crimes were part of their official duties.  In effect, the Supreme Court thereby granted presidents the power to commit crimes with virtual impunity.  Thus, yet another of America’s guardrails has been broken, paving the way for the emergence of a tyrant king.

Pardoning the Violent Insurrectionists

Speaking of convicted felons, Donald Trump promised during his 2024 presidential campaign to pardon the criminal insurrectionists who violently attempted to overthrow the U.S. government on Trump’s behalf.  Ironically, he calls them “patriots” and called the violent insurrection “a day of love.”^[22]

Only a complete narcissist would regard this day of infamy as a day of love.  In reality, the day stands as the starkest and most egregious example of Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses in his first presidential term.  On January 6^th, 2021, a joint session of Congress, including then Vice President Mike Pence in his role as President of the Senate, met to count the Electoral College’s votes for the next President of the United States.  Going back to the late 19^th century, this joint session has met as a ceremonial formality.  The vote counts are officially reported, and the presidential election winner is formally announced.  The votes were already counted and checked by the states, prior to the joint session, in accord with the Constitution and the law.  The federal government has no authority to do anything other than report the results at this session.^[23]

President Trump decided to incite an insurrection on this day.  An insurrection is a violent and criminal attempt to overthrow the government.  As previously discussed, Trump claimed election fraud in the 2020 election without any evidence.  Trump also falsely claimed that VP Pence could and should declare the vote counts null and void.  For what should be obvious reasons, one man cannot legally or constitutionally override the entire nation’s election results and declare their own choice for president the winner.  To do so would clearly be the move of a dictator.  In other words, what Trump asked of Pence was to disenfranchise all American voters of their most precious constitutional right of all: the right to vote.^[24]

A small gathering of white supremacists, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis loyal to Trump attended his “Stop the Steal” rally earlier that day.  There, Trump and his allies incited the gathering to storm the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell.”  These domestic terrorists then marched a few blocks away to the Capitol building where some 2,000 Trump supporters had gathered, and led them in an assault on the Capitol building.  It was later discovered that these domestic terrorists had planned the insurrection in advance.  Nearly half of the assembled Trump supporters violently attacked and injured police officers.  They threatened the cops with statements like, “You will die on your knees!” and “Kill him with his own gun!”  Black officers were called racial slurs as they were attacked.  They then broke into the Capitol, damaging and desecrating the building and other government property inside.  The insurrectionists also explicitly threatened to murder Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and many other senators and representatives.^[25]

1,575 of the insurrectionists had been criminally charged by January 20^th, 2025.  Over 800 plead guilty to some or all charges, with over 900 found guilty and sentenced by that date.  Only three were acquitted on all charges.  More court cases were still ongoing.^[26]

…

On day one, President Trump unleashed the first round in an onslaught of deceptive, illegal, and damaging executive orders.  One such order falsely asserted that under President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice “ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6.”^[27]  Following through on his nefarious campaign promise, President Trump pardoned all but 14 of the 1,575 charged and convicted felons for crimes committed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6^th, 2021.  And for the unpardoned 14, he commuted their sentences and immediately released them all from jail.  Dozens of the pardoned convicts had prior convictions or pending charges for crimes that were also pardoned, including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material, and drug trafficking.^[28][29]

Trump let them all get away with their heinous crimes, and all but 14 without even a criminal record.^[30]

Why?  As we have seen, Donald Trump very obviously does not care about law, order, justice, or even basic morality.  More than half of these criminals were guilty of violently assaulting police officers at the Capitol.  Some had prior criminal records, now expunged.  Over 140 DC police officers were injured, some of whom were permanently maimed.  Several officers died either from grievous wounds or suicide from the trauma over the next several days after January 6^th.  These vile, anti-American criminal insurrectionists attempted to overthrow the elected government of the United States.  Thankfully they failed, but their goal was to force the election loser, Donald Trump, to unconstitutionally and illegally remain president.

Why did Trump pardon them?  Because they proved their loyalty to their king, Donald Trump.

Trump continues to defend all the criminal insurrectionists.  This includes even the most violent offenders who seriously injured and maimed police officers.  He also continues to defend those with priors, including those with convictions for the sexual abuse of children and manslaughter.  “I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government,” President Trump again asserted in February 2025, falsely attacking the Biden administration again, and shifting the narrative to falsely imply the criminal insurrectionists are, somehow, the victims.^[31]  He has since appointed a far right wing podcaster and January 6^th apologist to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which heads the aforementioned inspectors-general who investigate fraud, abuse, and corruption in the federal agencies.^[32]  So far, we know that video evidence of the insurrection-related crimes has been deleted since.^[33]

After pardoning them, Trump has personally met with some of the violent insurrectionists at the White House.  It was vaguely admitted by the White House that they were invited to meet the president.^[34]

Trump now has a violent gang of criminal domestic terrorists at his disposal.  They’re fiercely loyal to Trump, are walking free, and have proven themselves willing to do his bidding regardless of legality or morality.  He called on his “patriots” once before to storm the Capitol, where they assaulted police officers, broke in, destroyed property, and threatened to murder prominent government officials. 

What might Trump call on them to do next?

Weaponizing our National Security Agencies

As discussed previously in this series, in his first term President Trump chose, or sometimes inherited, a fair number of experienced professionals for cabinet roles.  While some were loyalist sycophants, perhaps more than not understood that loyalty to the Constitution is of the utmost importance.  Not loyalty to the president, which is indicative of authoritarianism.  As the years passed, Trump chose only loyal sycophants to replace the dozens of cabinet members, advisors, and ranking staffers who resigned when pressed too far to go along with Trump’s authoritarian demands made of them.^[35]

In his second term, President Trump apparently no longer contends with any resistance to his authoritarian impulses from cabinet members, advisors, and staffers.^[36]  No longer is he pestered by those with an inconvenient sense of legal and constitutional fidelity.  Like cultists devoted to their leader, Trump appointed a lineup of sycophantic loyalists across the board in his cabinet this time around.  Along with the loyalty-tested White House staff, they’ve already proven their willingness to follow Trump’s orders.  Like his mob of criminal insurrectionists, they are willing to bend or break laws or violate the Constitution to do the king’s bidding.^[37]

…

In the same first day executive order that falsely accused the Biden administration of ruthlessly prosecuting the insurrectionists, it also falsely accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the government against Donald Trump himself.  “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” it falsely asserts.  It also falsely blamed Biden’s administration of having “engage[d] in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents.”  Trump even had the gall to declare an end to the weaponization of government in this order.  The order vaguely charged the government to “appropriate action to correct past misconduct,” leaving it up to the DOJ to review the actions of any agencies with criminal or civil enforcement power that took action “contrary” to his order.^[38]

The sheer hypocrisy of this order makes the blood of those who love truth and justice boil with rage.

First, poor logic has been used by Trump, and repeated by his allies and supporters.  It suggests that the circumstance of Biden being president while Trump was charged and prosecuted somehow amounts to “evidence” of corruption on Biden’s part.  This is not evidence: it is circumstance.  If Trump’s assumption hypothetically made rational sense, not a single alleged criminal in the entire country, guilty or otherwise, would ever be found guilty in a court of law.  Because if it were sufficient for the defense to claim that the prosecution is unjustly targeting the defendant because the prosecution is biased against them and wants to win their case, then every criminal in every case would fully get away with their crimes.  An examination of real evidence is required to prove or disprove a court case instead.

Second, an examination of the evidence clearly exonerates the Biden administration of Trump’s false accusations.  As FBI Director Comey operated the FBI with full independence from President Obama, the DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland likewise acted with full independence from President Biden.  No evidence exists of any conversations or collaboration between Biden and Garland about Trump’s cases.  To claim otherwise is to lie.  A few days after Trump announced he would run for president again, Garland added a second layer of independence for good measure by appointing an independent special counsel, Jack Smith, to take over the lead of the legal teams prosecuting the two federal criminal cases against Trump.^[39]  Smith has had a reputation for relentlessly and skillfully winning difficult cases against war criminals, mobsters, and corrupt police officers.^[40]  He also has a reputation for doing what he can for any suspects in his own investigations if and when he believes the evidence points to their innocence.^[41]  Trump at the time bizarrely called this assurance of independence itself a “horrendous abuse of power.”^[42]  Reasonable minds capable of sound logic would conclude the exact opposite.  Clearly, Trump likes to use words in ways that suggest he does not understand what they mean.  But of course, we must recall that Trump is not concerned with the facts.  He is concerned with just saying things, anything at all he can imagine, that sticks in the gullible minds of his supporters.  Ironically, while Trump also voraciously accused President Biden of being directly involved in fixing the case against him, Trump’s personal legal team defending him in those federal cases argued the exact opposite in court.  Trump’s lawyers complained that Special Counsel Jack Smith was “too independent” and lacked oversight from a boss over him.  This level of independence has been historically typical, however, so their argument lacked merit.^[43]  But of course, again, we’ve seen Trump’s pattern is to accuse others of what he either would do or is in fact guilty of doing.  Unlike in the Trump administration, the utmost regard for law, order, and due process was thoroughly followed throughout Smith’s proceedings.  Smith’s team of professionals would not have charged Trump had they not thought they had an airtight case that would likely lead to a conviction, and had the grand juries in each federal case not independently elected to indict Trump.^{[44][45][46][47]}

Third, recall that Trump is in fact a convicted felon.  Given the evidence of his crimes and their severity, Trump would likely be serving prison time for the rest of his life had he not been reelected.  Many questions arise from this fact alone.  But to the point here, what does this fact tell us about the trustworthiness of Donald Trump’s word?

Finally, as Trump’s propensity for telling lies is legendary, so too is his capacity to shamelessly accuse others of what he is truly guilty of.  This has been his pattern, evident by an examination of any claims he’s made over the last decade of his political career and comparing them to the facts.  We saw this when Trump repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that he was the victim of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  In reality, Donald Trump is the one who illegally attempted to commit election fraud along with several accomplices.  Many additional examples could easily be cited.

…

It took no time at all for President Trump’s own so-called “end to the weaponization of government” order to be broken – by none other than himself.  But of course, as is generally the case with Trump, his order was political theater, not a fact-based policy decision.  Trump garnered the illusion of bringing a fictional weaponization of government to an end in the minds of all who would believe him with his order based on lies.  In reality, he is actually the one weaponizing the government against his enemies and autocratically empowering himself.

And so, on day one, the same day he declared an end of weaponizing the government, Trump began weaponizing the government.  He initiated interrogations of DOJ and FBI staff with the aim of identifying all who worked on either of the two federal cases against Trump under Special Counsel Jack Smith or on any cases involving the 1,575 indicted or convicted January 6^th criminals.  Two dozen of the highest-ranking DOJ and FBI leaders were immediately fired by end of January, including DOJ deputy attorneys-general, FBI executive deputy directors, and regional directors.^[48][49]  These highly esteemed national security leaders were fired for their involvement in those cases, and for no other reasons.  Their combined loss marked a loss to the country of many decades of national security experience and expertise.

The firings did not stop there.  Over the next few weeks, the names of thousands of DOJ and FBI staff members who were involved in any of the federal cases were compiled and titled, “Terminations.”^[50][51][52]  The count of high-ranking DOJ lawyers and FBI agents fired by the administration reached 75 by mid-February.  Over a dozen more were fired in late February for simply having been appointed by the Biden administration.^[53]  The firings are continuing.  While most of the thousands on the terminations list have not been fired yet, thousands of FBI agents were transferred out of Washington in a massive and politically motivated shakeup of the organization, with some high-ranking DOJ and FBI staff stripped of their posts.  Some more resigned from the pressure of having to contend with a hostile administration that promised retribution against them for simply doing their critically important work with integrity.^[54][55]

These actions go well above and beyond to reshape these institutions.  Their independence and impartial justice have been severely compromised by Trump’s controlling and self-serving political agenda,^[56] thereby weaponizing the FBI and DOJ to serve his own interests above all others.

One former Justice Department employee was interviewed recently.  She was at the agency for 25 years before Trump fired her in early 2017.  She had refused to carry out his first travel ban for people from majority Muslim countries.  She’s even more concerned about the institution today.  “Firing civil servants who sought to hold him accountable is really a twofer for President Trump,” she said.  “He gets to retaliate and exact vengeance against prosecutors for just doing their jobs while also intimidating everyone across government and beyond.”^[57]

Another 25-year veteran of the Justice Department worries the firings are the start of something bigger.  “What does that start, are we now going to be in a cycle of every change in administration, there’s retribution against those who took positions, whether it’s prosecutorial positions or policy positions that you disagreed with?”^[58]

In normal presidential administrations, the FBI and DOJ were never politicized or weaponized like this.  FBI agents and DOJ lawyers are nonpartisan career employees.  They are hired just like private sector workers are.  They normally keep their roles from administration to administration, typically until they retire.  The DOJ and FBI have histories of political independence, and have been responsible for highly sensitive investigations involving counterterrorism, public corruption and cybersecurity.^[59]  Indeed, while FBI agents and DOJ staff avoid politics as a matter of principle in their work, as a group they privately tend to be politically conservative.  They did not ask to be assigned to any of Trump’s or the insurrection cases.  They dutifully and professionally did the work they were assigned.  It’s their job.  And they took great care to build airtight legal cases before charges were even considered.  Trump was eventually charged with a number of felonies because, after these highly trained and experienced professionals collected and analyzed a damning level of evidence against him, they were not only convinced by the evidence that Trump is guilty, but were further convinced that a federal judge and jury would likely conclude the same.

And now the thousands left who worked on those federal cases know that this administration despises them.  That has been made abundantly clear.  The stress of waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be fired, hangs over their heads, threatening their careers, harming their reputations, and putting them and their families through needless difficulties.^[60]

No regard was given for the disarray and damage these layoffs and threats have certainly caused America’s national security.  Many were in the middle of active investigations when fired, including monitoring and preventing both domestic and foreign threats that include terrorist plots.  The FBI Agents Association, a membership group of more than 14,000 active and former FBI agents, called it “outrageous” of the administration to fire agents and staffers because they did their jobs and worked on Trump’s federal cases.  “Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the bureau and its new leadership for failure.”^[61]  In addition to compromising national security, these actions have had a powerful chilling effect on agents by dissuading them from pursuing public corruption charges against any president or his administration and allies going forward.  Presidents and their cabinet members are henceforth less likely to be held accountable for breaking the law, which will only encourage corruption.^[62]  Finally, these actions will undoubtedly dissuade new recruits from joining the ranks of the FBI and the DOJ, as well as dissuade veteran agents and staff from staying.  This will further damage our nation’s security for perhaps decades to come.^[63]

But Trump, a criminal narcissist, wants revenge and power at all costs.  If that means demonizing, threatening to fire, and firing thousands of America’s best career law enforcement agents and staff, thereby not only unjustly harming their careers and personal lives but jeopardizing the nation’s security, then so be it.

Weaponizing the FBI

President Trump appointed Kash Patel to be his FBI Director.^[64]  He did so after threatening and chasing former Director Christopher Wray out of his job.  Wray had too much integrity to capitulate to Trump’s dictatorial whims in Trump’s first presidential term, like Comey did before him.^[65]

Patel has no prior experience at the FBI or running a major law enforcement agency.  This alone clearly makes him unqualified to direct the FBI.  Trump tapped Patel not for his qualifications, but for his voluminous and very public expressions of sycophantic loyalty to Trump which have taken several forms.  Patel has made repeated appearances on right wing podcasts and programs during the years of Biden’s presidency.  He has defended Trump, defended the January 6^th insurrectionists, and attacked the FBI with venomous lies and right-wing conspiracy theories.  Patel also authored two children’s books that aggrandize Donald Trump and depict him as the protagonist who is, literally, a king called “King Donald.”^[66]  Patel also produced a music video with former Trump White House chief of staff Steve Bannon, the Trump-pardoned criminal who embezzled millions from Trump supporters’ donations to his supposed Trump border wall fund.  The music video was made to benefit the families of the January 6^th insurrectionist criminals.  The song features Trump himself reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which Trump specifically did for this production, as a choir of twenty inmates who participated in the January 6^th insurrection sing the national anthem and chant “USA!” at the end.  A video montage of Trump performing “patriotic acts” is interspersed with footage of the violent January 6^th assault on the Capitol building.  The contemptable and revolting work portrays the violent attempt to overthrow our legitimate constitutional government in their effort to install a tyrant king as, somehow, a deeply patriotic act.^[67]  Patel has additionally funded legal and “educational” (propaganda) efforts to support and defend Donald Trump and his allies including the insurrectionists.^[68][69]  Notably, Patel’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, also has no related professional experience, but is a right wing podcaster with a similarly insane record of his own.  Bongino has called for the FBI to be disbanded, has called FBI agents “thugs,” and has explicitly called for Democrats including President Biden to be imprisoned without due process.^[70]

Patel also wrote a right-wing propaganda book for adults.  It espouses and defends right wing conspiracy theories and defends Trump and some of his many lies.  His book promotes the same right-wing conspiracies that Trump also professes.  He’s advocated for mass layoffs in the FBI’s leadership (currently in the works), and firing the top ranks in particular (also in the works).  His book falsely accuses the Biden administration of weaponizing the government, as Trump’s “weaponization of government” executive order also falsely espoused.  Patel has also expressed his wish to close down the FBI headquarters in Washington DC, send all agents out into the field (which he has begun to do), and turn the building into a museum for the “deep state,” a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that is used to meritlessly disparage the civil service broadly.^[71][72]

As a notable aside, right wing conspiracists like Patel and Trump commonly disparage civil servants as the “deep state.”  In reality, civil servants are professionals who often work difficult long hours, foregoing more lucrative jobs in order to make a difference working on federal projects that would not be commercially feasible in the private sector, like cancer research.  Civil servants can work at the federal or state level, and include a very wide range of careers: postal workers, police officers, public school teachers, staff at various agencies including the DOJ and the FBI, national park rangers and staff, researchers whose work is impractical for the private sector to perform and made openly available (i.e. medical genome research, which has vitally enabled us to understand cancer and other medical fields of study), and social servants who provide a wide range of services from psychological help to food and medical aid.  They have contributed much to the country, often with humility and without much acknowledgement.  The federal government is the largest employer of civil servants in the country, with around 3 million employees as of January 2025, though that number has since diminished with DOGE’s and additional mass firings.^[73][74]

This book also contains Patel’s so-called enemies list: a list of the names of several dozen politicians and public figures he falsely and nefariously claims are members of the “deep state.”^[75]  In line with this baseless right wing conspiracy theory, Patel lumps them together with civil servants and denigrates them all as “a cabal of unelected tyrants” and, with the same extraordinary degree of irony Trump has when he accuses others of what he himself is guilty of, “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”^[76]  Bear in mind that Patel is talking about the very people he has been placed in charge of at the FBI when he denigrates the “deep state.”  His list includes President Biden, his son Hunter Biden (as a notable aside, Hunter’s crimes amounted to filling out a government form incorrectly and tax evasion in one year when he was distressed by the death of his brother: note that Trump has actually bragged about evading taxes himself), his AG Merrick Garland, and many other prominent political figures.  The list even includes a number of former Trump cabinet members and aides who broke with Trump in his first term because even they could no longer tolerate Trump’s pressure on them to disregard laws and the Constitution.  They include Trump’s former AG Bill Barr, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Cassidy Hutchinson, and Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, among others.^[77]

Patel threatened them all in a podcast last year.  He said, “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media… Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”^[78]  Given Trump’s history of caring nothing for operating in accord with the law or the Constitution, we can reasonably expect that Trump could, and would, expect Patel to arbitrarily jail those on their mutual enemies list without due process.  Indeed, as we will see in the next section, his administration has already been arbitrarily jailing individuals he wants revenge on without due process.  We can expect he will falsely call it whatever he wants to make it sound convincing to his beguiled supporters and defenders… as he has been doing already.

Obviously, we are talking about clear violations of the U.S. Constitution and American liberties.  But with Trump’s record of complete disregard for the Constitution and the law, we now have in FBI Director Patel a loyalist who is able and willing to do his dear leader’s bidding.  Even President Ronald Reagan’s former FBI Director William Webster came out against Patel’s appointment.  The conservative former director spoke about his tenure at the FBI, where he was contacted by the president only twice – once by President Jimmy Carter, who asked him to investigate an issue, and once when President Ronald Reagan had a question about Nancy Reagan’s security.  This is consistent with former FBI Director Comey’s experience of the democratic norm of maintaining strict independence for the FBI from the presidency, as discussed earlier.  But Patel’s obvious sycophantic loyalty to Trump was a big problem for Webster.  Webster stated that Patel’s record for executing even Trump’s unconstitutional and illegal directives during his tenure as an aide and then as chief of staff in the Pentagon in Trump’s first term “suggest[s] a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law – a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice.”^[79]

As director of the FBI for just three months so far, Patel has already taken steps towards breaking down and reshaping the FBI into Trump’s weapon.  He has not yet closed down the FBI’s headquarters and turned it into a “museum for the deep state.”  But, give him time.  Patel’s publicly known wish to execute mass terminations at the FBI have been done by Trump’s interim acting FBI director while Patel awaited Senate confirmation.  There is some evidence that Patel illegally directed those efforts before having his position as director.^[80][81]  Patel has also cut staffing in the FBI’s office on domestic terrorism, and abandoned the use of a tool to track such investigations.  This has undermined law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists, nationalists, and anti-government extremists – just the kinds of people who orchestrated the January 6^th insurrection.^[82]  While two-thirds of all terrorist attacks in the United States are committed by far right domestic terrorists (white supremacists, white nationalists, fascists, and anti-abortionists),^[83] this move indicates that investigating and preventing domestic terrorist attacks, which largely involve violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, is not a priority of Patel’s.  Patel has been a prominent critic of efforts to combat right wing domestic terrorists.  Indeed, as mentioned he even helped produce a music video to benefit the families of the January 6^th insurrectionists – a group of right-wing domestic terrorists.^[84][85][86]

Weaponizing the DOJ

President Trump also appointed Pam Bondi as his Attorney General to head the DOJ.  Bondi has worked for Trump as his personal lawyer, and notably defended him during his first impeachment hearing.^[87]  She has also notably tied her rising personal fortunes to Trump’s rise to power since his first presidential run in 2016, linking his political success to her own financial success.^[88]

As the former AG of Florida state and the chair of Trump’s America First Policy Institute, Bondi has a history of undermining voting rights.  In her work for the AFPI, Bondi has a history of working to specifically disenfranchise non-whites from Americans’ most sacred right of all: the right to vote.  She filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration that challenged its authority to protect ballot access for black Americans and other minority groups.^[89]  In this, she is not alone amongst Republicans: since conservatives have taken a 6:3 majority in the Supreme Court (thanks to Trump’s first term appointments), a series of decisions are pointing to a pattern of disenfranchising black Americans and other minority groups of their right to vote.^[90]  During the first Trump administration, it became considerably more difficult for black and other minority Americans in poorer districts and counties to be able to vote.  Voting locations were closed down in poorer counties that were predominantly of black or other minority ethnicities.  This forced them to have to travel very long distances to vote.  But poor citizens cannot always even afford to make the trips, given they may lack a car or may either be unable to afford or access busing services.  When buses were charitably organized to take groups of poor residents to voting centers, cops were reported to have pulled some busses over without cause.  Even when they could get to a voting center, long lines just to get inside became prohibitive with the closures forcing more people to congregate to fewer locations.  In the state of Georgia, a particularly cruel and notorious law was passed to make it illegal to obtain drinking water or food while waiting for several hours on line.  This was designed to discourage Democratic-leaning and non-white voters from even trying to vote.  By contrast, citizens in wealthier districts are in more predominantly white neighborhoods.  They did not suffer either long lines or need to travel far to vote.^{[91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99]}

When the Biden administration sought to protect blacks and minorities from these unconstitutional and illegal voting restrictions, Pam Bondi filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for doing so.  It would appear that Bondi’s claims of wanting to make laws “colorblind” are evidently a ruse to fool superficial observers that she’s not a bigot, while she works to enable governments to pass bigoted legislation and rules, restricting or denying voting rights to non-white citizens.^[100]

Bondi also defended Trump’s baseless election fraud lies, claiming without evidence that Trump won the 2020 presidential election but the “deep state” cheated.^[101]  This seems to be a job requirement for the Trump administration: like Patel, Hegseth, and about every other cabinet pick, they’ve all repeated Trump’s election fraud lies ad nauseum.  While she appears to not have helped produce music videos to aid the criminal insurrectionists, she has served as an attorney to defend one of the election fraud criminals who attempted to discard valid votes in the state of Georgia and fraudulently claim Trump won the state.  Her client was one of Trump’s aforementioned allies in Trump’s own very real election fraud schemes.  Bondi shamelessly argued in court that her client had the right to decertify the entire election based on the “mere suspicion of voter fraud.”^[102]

Another way of putting this: Bondi, a practicing lawyer at that time, and now the top law officer in the United States of America as Attorney General, actually argued in a court of law that no evidence is required in order to discard election results (and disenfranchise American voters) if one simply feels like discarding them.^[103]

We find in Bondi yet another unscrupulous sycophant without integrity, willing to say and do anything to please Trump – even if it means unconstitutionally and illegally disenfranchising voters she does not like.  She has also encouraged the politically motivated and vengeful prosecutions of Trump’s “enemies” already discussed, as Patel has.^[104]  Bondi gave lip service during her Senate confirmation hearings (as Patel did) that her department would not be politicized.  Yet she continued the Trump administration’s firings of DOJ staff who worked on either Trump’s federal cases or on any of the insurrectionist criminals’ cases.^{[105][106][107][108]}

Soon after taking her position as Attorney General, Bondi sent out 14 memos to the DOJ staff to realign the department with Trump’s agenda.  A “Weaponization Working Group” was established, tasked with reviewing “the activities of all department and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years” (i.e. during the Biden administration).  In line with the lies told by Trump and now Bondi, the memos specify several things to be examined including “weaponization” by former special counsel Jack Smith, as well as the prosecutors and the investigators who took part in the “unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home.”  The working group was also tasked with looking at, “the pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.^[109]

First of all, if one is serious about investigating unethical and potentially criminal behavior within an organization, circular reasoning is not the way to start.  That is to say, assuming what you wish to be true in your premise (i.e. that Smith had “weaponized” the government against Trump, or that the raid on Trump’s home was “unprecedented” and presumably unlawful or wrong) as Bondi has done in her memos is not at all the mark of someone truly interested in impartial justice.  It is the mark of someone interested in political theater, someone who wants her assumed premise to be perceived as true, rather than honestly find out the truth whatever it may be.  What are the consequences of assuming the premise when it comes to law and order?  Invariably, it is the gross miscarriage of justice.

Second, we discussed the two federal cases against Trump as directed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  One involved an election fraud scheme orchestrated by Trump and his allies to fraudulently overturn the state of Georgia’s electoral count.  Joe Biden won that state in the 2020 presidential election.  That is a fact, proven by several recounts of the votes all done in accord with the law and the Constitution.  But Trump and his cronies attempted to coerce and bully Georgia state officials into falsely declaring that Georgia’s electoral votes should have gone to Trump instead of Biden.  The evidence of Trump’s guilt is undeniable: we have an abundance of witness testimony that damns Trump, records of vote counts that contradict Trump’s claims, and even an audio recording of Trump himself on the phone very obviously threatening the Attorney General of the state of Georgia with bad consequences if he does not “find 11,780 votes” to cheat and hand him a win.  Three separate countings had already validated and certified the election counts prior to the call.^[110]  In the aftermath of the Georgia AG’s refusal to criminally commit election fraud on Trump’s behalf, the AG’s contact information (phone numbers, home address, email address) was doxed: he and his family members were harassed by thousands of Trump supporters for years.  He received many demands for his resignation for not being loyal to Trump.  He received many death threats.  And in order to get to him, his wife received many disgusting and abhorrent sexualized messages.  And the home of his daughter-in-law and her two children was broken into after her husband, the AG’s son, had died.^[111]  He was not the only Georgia state election official or worker to be similarly victimized.  In one other incident, a highly regarded local election worker was falsely accused of altering election counts by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.  An innocuous video showing the worker handing something to her mother (also an election worker) was twisted into supposed evidence of catching them in the act.  The object she handed her mother was not a USB drive of election files, as Giuliani claimed without evidence.  She had simply handed her mother a ginger mint.  Both her and her mother also had their contact info doxed: they received thousands of death threats and other sick and disturbing calls and messages.  Both women lived in fear of leaving their homes, endured the losses of their jobs, and quit working elections because of the brutal years of criminal harassment perpetrated by Trump’s vile supporters.  At the same county election place where they had served, the entire staff had in fact quit from fear of the threats.^[112]

Pam Bondi’s memos alone tell us all we need to know about her true agenda at the DOJ.  She has the gall to call Jack Smith’s prosecution “weaponization?”  If she truly wished to identify where the real weaponization of government is coming from, Bondi should look in the mirror.

Similarly, the “unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home” refers to the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump had not only illegally retained classified documents, but for nearly a year had obstructed all good faith efforts by the FBI to retrieve the documents from him.  While Biden also was found to have wrongly held onto classified documents from his tenure as Vice President, the difference here is that Biden informed the FBI of the documents as soon as they were realized to have been in his possession, and Biden fully cooperated with law enforcement to expediently and properly return them to the authorities.  Trump on the other hand refused to acknowledge that he had some or all of them, and has claimed he had the right to keep them (he did not).  Trump even lied about having them to his own lawyers, who were trying to cooperate with the authorities.  Trump also asked his staff to hide the documents and even asked them to destroy video footage (evidence) of them being moved around.  Finally, there was ample evidence that Trump willfully shared classified and sensitive information in the documents with others who were not cleared to see the information.^[113]

And we have her memo’s presumption that “the pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” were conducted against the January 6 insurrectionists.  What does is say about a person’s principles when they can defend a violent gang led by white nationalists and fascists who attacked, injured, and maimed over 140 police officers, broke into the Capitol building, damaged and desecrated the place, and verbally threatened to murder the vice president, the speak of the house, and various other senators and representatives?^[114]  “Improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions…” circularly arguing and leading the supposed investigation once again with the presumption of Bondi’s own agenda.  If you’re on Trump’s enemies list, you are guilty until proven innocent.  That is plainly Bondi’s agenda.  Why even call it an investigation?  Let’s call it what it truly is: a gross miscarriage of justice before it’s even begun, a heinous abuse and misuse of power, and a circus side show performance for the pleasure of the vengeful Donald Trump and his supporters.

In just a matter of months, AG Bondi has continued to raise red flags with the broad community of law-and-order professionals concerning the supposed “independence” of the DOJ under her tenure, such as by threatening to fire attorneys who don’t advance legal arguments they disagree with.^[115]  Here are some additional highlights of what she’s done to “align” the DOJ with Trump’s agenda.  She has fired more veteran career DOJ leaders for simply having found their jobs during Biden’s presidency, depriving the nation of their vast expertise.^[116]  She has stunted anti-corruption efforts at the DOJ, undoing laws and regulations that led to President Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of his corruption scandal.^[117]  Can we imagine what other president might benefit from such an effort?  She fired the heads of organized crime and drug task force teams within the DOJ.^[118]  She abused her authority to follow Trump’s lead in punishing law firms on his enemies list (as we’ll see in the next section),^[119] and cancelled nearly $1 billion in grants to fund police mental health and the victims of sexual assault and other crimes.^{[120][121][122]}  She is also threatening to close the Community Relations Service, an office that’s existed since the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that aims to prevent and resolve racial and ethnic tensions, conflicts, and civil disorders.^[123]

Weaponizing the Presidency

With all that said about the weaponization of our top national security agencies at the hands of Patel and Bondi, we now cover the worst abuses of power coming directly from Donald Trump himself.  President Trump has utilized a vast array of executive powers to consolidate more power for himself.  He abuses his role to put on a show of force to appease his pro-authoritarian base of support as well as to exact petty and personal revenge on his enemies, such as by revoking secret service protection for President Biden’s family.

In violation after violation of the Constitution, he’s been illegally assuming powers he does not have as president, while also abusing his power to harm his perceived enemies.  But constitutionality, law and order, and democracy are of no concern to our convicted felon president.

Some checks and balances remain to safeguard America from becoming the dictatorship Trump is pushing the country towards becoming.  But their fidelity to law and order has made them a prime target for assault by the Trump administration and their allies in a Republican-controlled Congress that has abandoned its role as a check on presidential expansion and overreach.

Unconstitutional Arrests and Deportations

The Trump administration claims it has been arresting and deporting only unauthorized immigrants who are gang members or have criminal records.  They claim they are making the country safe.

This is a lie.

Under President Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been arbitrarily arresting and deporting legal immigrant residents, including green card holders.  It has even arrested and deported U.S. citizens as young as two years old.  We know for certain that at least some of those arrested and deported have no criminal records.  Some of the deportees have been sent to an exceptionally harsh prison in El Salvador where there is no protection from cruel and unusual punishment – as the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment requires of all, citizen or not, who are accused of crimes in the United States.  ICE has also withheld the due process of law required by the Fifth Amendment.  When accused of a crime, all individuals including unauthorized immigrants are entitled to due process.  ICE is instead arbitrarily grabbing people from their homes or right off the streets, handcuffing them, jailing them, and urgently deporting them.  They are illegally not being informed of what crimes they are accused of, are illegally not read their Miranda rights, and are not provided the 30 days required by law for them to find legal representation and argue their cases in court. ^{[124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135]}

In other words, ICE is arbitrarily and illegally kidnapping, jailing, and deporting people as one would expect to occur in a dictatorship, not in the United States.

To cover up these deplorably inhumane and illegal actions, Trump has resorted to slandering the accused as “illegals and gang members.”  No credible evidence has been presented that these are all either unauthorized immigrants or gang members.  In the single example of what the Trump administration gallingly calls “evidence,” Trump himself posted on social media a photo of himself holding a photo of one deportee’s tattooed hand.  He again showed this photo to an interviewer on live TV.  He claimed the clear “MS13” lettering indicates he was a member of the gang.  But the letters and numbers were very obviously doctored.  Apparently, an amateur digital artist at the administration used Photoshop to manufacture false evidence, which is a crime.  Other recent photos of the same deportee’s hands also show no “MS13” lettering.^{[136][137][138]}

In a recent interview after discussing his very questionable immigration crackdowns, Trump was asked if presidents have to uphold the Constitution.  He answered, “I don’t know.”  He gave the same answer when asked if citizens and non-citizens are entitled to due process under the law.^[139]  This comes from the same man, just a few months earlier on January 20^th, who swore an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

This is clearly illegal and unconstitutional.  It’s also utterly cruel and devastating to these individuals and their families.  Not by any stretch of the imagination does an obviously doctored photo count as credible evidence that someone is a gang member.  Nor does it make them less worthy of having their Constitutional rights stripped and sent off to an especially cruel prison out of the country.

America is supposed to be the land of the free.  It’s not supposed to be subjected to the lawless whims of a contemptable dictator.

Back in Trump’s first term, we saw unconstitutional and illegal arrests made even then.  For example, in the aftermath of a series of wrongful police shootings of black Americans, a number of largely peaceful protests with some incidents of violence occurred in the summer of 2020.  Trump sent masked federal agents without uniforms out to, in essence, kidnap largely peaceful protesters.  They were unlawfully captured and forced into unmarked vans without being read their Miranda rights.  They had their property searched without warrants and were questioned without the opportunity to call a lawyer first.  Violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights, Trump spun this clearly authoritarian maneuver into the same false narrative of “arresting violent criminals.”^{[140][141][142][143][144][145][146]}

Bullying Judges

Trump and his allies have been publicly bullying and threatening federal judges when they decide against the president in cases challenging his orders.  The three branches of government are designed to serve as checks and balances on each other.  All Americans should have learned this in grade school, though apparently about half the American electorate either forgot about this or does not care.  When a president is giving unconstitutional or illegal orders, as the majority of Trump’s orders have in fact been, these cases serve to block such presidential abuses of power and overreach.  But the administration’s goal is to cow the judicial branch into submission, to break what is the last guardrail the nation has against the president becoming a tyrant king.

When a normal president (e.g. one without designs to obtain absolute unchecked power) disagrees with a judge’s verdict, their administration would appeal the decision.  Their staffers, who are normally trained and experienced professionals rather than MAGA enthusiasts, would try to make a better legal case and hope for a better outcome in the appeal with another judge.  In a democratic republic like the United States, that’s how justice should operate for everyone, including the president.

What neither a president nor a regular citizen who loses a court case does is personally threaten the judge, their career, and their family with severe repercussions for not ruling in their favor.  Yet this is essentially what Trump and his allies have been doing.  They’ve called for the impeachment of judges that decide against them.  Trump supporters have explicitly threatened judges and their families as well with menacing and violent rhetoric, including death threats.  To threaten a judge’s career, life, or the lives of their family members for fairly ruling against you in a court of law is unquestionably indicative of both moral deplorability and authoritarianism in both Trump’s allies in government and his general supporters.^{[147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155]}

Intimidating and Extorting Law Firms

Trump has also used his executive power to illegally attack, intimidate, and get revenge on law firms he hates.  The firms were clearly targeted because they worked for a wide variety of his perceived enemies.  Some worked for a number of Democratic politicians he hates, including one for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.  In some cases, he has targeted firms involved with Democratic fundraising efforts such as ActBlue.  One of the partners for a targeted firm helped Kamala Harris prepare for her presidential debate with Trump.  Another targeted firm once worked with Robert Muller, the former FBI director of President G.W. Bush who served as special counsel investigating Russian election interference and Trump’s potential role in it.

Trump’s orders claim that national interests are at stake.  But this is an easily disproven lie, based on the false claim that Biden’s DOJ was weaponized against Trump.  The fact that 100% of targeted firms have worked for individuals Trump has personal vendettas against makes it abundantly clear he is illegally and unconstitutionally exacting personal retaliation.

Trump’s orders against law firms have been clearly unconstitutional.  The chances of blocking his orders are therefore very high in a court of law.  Some law firms have fought back successfully in court so far.  As we would expect of a normal judiciary, federal judges are having none of it.  Trump’s orders are being consistently blocked and stricken down on the grounds they violate the First, Fifth, and Sixth amendment rights of targeted firms.

But damage has been done, and continues to be done, to the strength of democracy and law and order in the United States.

Other firms have been cowed into capitulating to Trump’s demands.  One has even agreed to be extorted to perform pro-bono work on Trump’s behalf.  Why have some given in without a fight?  We are only a few months into the presidency.  There is no expectation that Trump is done punishing them.  It takes time to complete court proceedings, meanwhile the damage has been done and income is lost.  The legal costs are also significant, even to big law firms.  And then there is the ongoing intimidation factor a firm would face, if having fought an authoritarian and vengeful president – Trump will continue to abuse his office to make life a living hell for these over the next four years.

This has had a chilling and intimidating effect on the legal practice broadly.  Big law firms now think twice before working on behalf of Trump’s perceived enemies.  When the president abuses his power to punish law firms that challenge him or his orders, fewer will take that risk and seek to challenge him in court even when absolutely justified.  Those on Trump’s enemies list thereby have had their capacity to defend themselves in court significantly diminished.  Thus, another step is taken towards transforming a president into a tyrant king with legal impunity.^{[156][157][158][159][160][161][162]}

Persecuting Student Protesters

The Trump administration has been abusing its authority to assail the constitutional rights of university students as well.  Students are not being arrested for crimes or on immigration status grounds, as has been claimed… as happens in dictatorships, they are being disappeared for their political views.

The arrested students are in the U.S. legally, such as green card holders.  The Trump administration has broken the law to have their legal statuses revoked.  They were then arrested and jailed, and in some cases deported.  Some had legal visas and were in the process of becoming permanent legal citizens, only to be arrested when they show up to their citizenship hearings.  Others have been arrested by masked unidentified agents and were not read their Miranda rights… “arrest” is therefore not the right word: these students were illegally kidnapped.  None were charged with crimes, raising the question of why they were “arrested” in the first place.  When deported, they have been denied the 30 days required by law for them to defend themselves in court – assuming they were criminally charged (which they were not).  Some were cruelly moved out of state far away from family members or were even deported in defiance of the law.^{[163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171]}

This is how arrests are made in a dictatorship.  Not in a democratic republic like the United States.

The Trump administration’s goal becomes immediately clear when one considers what the targeted students have in common: they’ve exercised their First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and speak out on matters Trump does not like.

Federal judges have rightfully demanded that the Trump administration itself comply with the law.  The administration has illegally denied due process of law and other constitutional rights to the accused.  Judges have also ordered the wrongfully deported be returned to the U.S..^{[172][173][174][175][176][177]}

But the administration has lied, stalled, and largely refused to comply with the law and with judges’ orders.  The Trump administration justified their authoritarian maneuvers with lies.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio  slandered the accused, claiming the administration is only targeting criminals, terrorists, and antisemites.  But in reality, none of the students have criminal records, and there is no evidence to suggest they’ve committed crimes.  No evidence of ties to terrorism have been produced by the administration as well.^{[178][179][180][181][182][183]}

In a democratic republic, you cannot arbitrarily arrest and immediately jail or deport people without evidence or due process.  Neither can a person be arrested for exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.  A dictator can, though.  And a president trying to become a dictator will try to get away with these criminal actions.

The accusations of antisemitism deserve some special attention here.  Antisemitism has been on the rise in America over the last ten years.  It is a very real, disturbing, and dangerous trend.^[184]

All the more reason to be appalled at the Trump administration for using antisemitism as a facade for its unconstitutional and illegal political stunts.  Antisemitism is defined as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.”  This does not at all describe what the targeted students have done.  The Israel-Hamas war is beyond the scope of this article.  But let us be clear.  Israel was brutally attacked by the vile terrorist organization Hamas on October 7, 2023.  This provoked Israel to justifiably declare war against Hamas.  The targeted students have not criticized the Jewish religion or ethnicity, nor have they vocalized any support for Hamas, for terrorism, or for anti-Jewish actions more broadly.  What they have done is peacefully protest on behalf of the Palestinian people in Gaza who have, in fact, been suffering a severe humanitarian crisis.  Hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are bystanders who happen to live in Gaza, have been caught in the middle of a war through no fault of their own.^[185][186]

The argument has been raised that Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 and are culpable for their actions.  Hamas did win 76 of 132 legislative seats in that election, with the opposing Fatah party winning 43 seats.  Hamas soon consolidated its power by violently murdering the opposition and twisting Gaza into a dictatorial regime without elections, and the people were intimidated into submission.  Today, many of those who voted in the election are dead.  A large swath of Palestinians now were not old enough to participate in the 2006 election.  Life expectancy is very low in Gaza, with 70% of the population under the age of 30.  The majority of Gaza today did not vote for Hamas.  While Palestinian support for Hamas today is not knowable, the region is a dictatorship where people are too afraid to speak their minds honestly for fear of retaliation, and suppression, violence, and warfare are omnipresent in their daily lives.  One can therefore surmise that Palestinian approval for Hamas is probably low.^{[187][188][189]}

Nonetheless, what we do know for certain is that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian men, women, children, and infants have been starving, ailing, and dying, while food and medical aid have largely been blocked from entering Gaza by the Israeli government.  The students’ criticisms of the Israeli government have been isolated to its treatment of the general Palestinian population who, at least in large part, are not culpable for Hamas or its actions.^[190]

Unfortunately, right wing propaganda has falsely conflated support for the Palestinian people with support for the terrorist group Hamas, as if they were one and the same thing.  They are clearly not.  While the Palestinian people are largely bystanders and victims of Hamas’s oppressive rule in Gaza, Hamas is every bit the despicable and brutal terrorist group that started the war by invading and brutalizing over 1,200 men, women, children, and infants in Israel.  It would appear that Rubio has not cared to distinguish the two when he falsely accused the students of antisemitism.

Ultimately, our views on the war or the humanitarian crisis are irrelevant to the point.  The peaceful protests by the students are federally protected free speech in its most legally protected form: political speech.  The First Amendment grants all Americans the right to speak and protest peacefully without government interference or suppression.  This is the case no matter how adamantly some of us may disagree with what is said.  It is a founding principle of our Constitution that the government should not infringe upon Americans’ liberty to freely speak our minds and assemble to peacefully protest in common cause.  As long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others or cause others direct harm (e.g. crying “fire” in a crowded theater), this is legal behavior.^[191][192]

At least this used to be protected speech, when America was a functioning democratic republic with a constitution that was respected by the presidency.  Revoking citizenship status, arbitrarily and illegally jailing or deporting people, these actions can only be characterized as an assault on not only the First Amendment, but the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.  These require such hallmark American rights as to have due process and a fair trial for alleged crimes.^{[193][194][195]}  Americans are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.  Yet the Trump administration appears to believe it can merely allege that crimes were committed in a reversed “guilty until proven innocent” scheme.  It thinks it can silence peaceful protestors, refusing their foundational rights to due process, and then complains bitterly and threatens judges that do their jobs and block their many illegal and unconstitutional orders.  The administration expects the public to simply accept Trump, a lying con artist, at his word.  This is how dictatorial regimes operate, not a free country.

As a notable aside, the Trump administration’s false accusations of antisemitism are appallingly hypocritical.  They have some gall, feigning concern for this very serious form of hatred and violence, while using it as a facade to hide their own sinister authoritarian machinations.  Donald Trump’s first presidential run coincided with the rise of a more vocal and active far right in the United States.  White nationalists, fascists, and Nazis of various kinds emerged in greater numbers, less ashamed to admit what they are.^[196][197]  As of 2024, 32% of Americans polled by Pew Research said they supported authoritarian systems of government.^[198]  They overwhelmingly vote for Trump, and have been emboldened by his bigoted rhetoric and support.  They have formed a core part of Trump’s base of support since.  In 2017 during Trump’s first presidential term, the “Unite the Right” rally occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia.  This was a significant gathering of white supremacists, white nationalists, Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen who protested with racist signs and tiki torches, while chanting antisemitic slogans.  We did not see President Trump saying or doing anything to upset them.  We did not hear him criticize them once.  Instead, he complimented them by saying there were “very fine people” on both sides, falsely equating these white supremacists with the counter-protestors who peacefully assembled there.^{[199][200][201]}  Later in 2021 as discussed, some of these right-wing groups were directly involved in the planning and orchestrating of the January 6 insurrection.  They attempted to violently overthrow the U.S. government on Trump’s behalf, and were incited by Trump himself to do so.^[202]  Let us never forget that real, actual antisemites have been supporting Trump all along, and have violently attempted to overthrow the U.S. government on Trump’s behalf and with Trump’s blessing.

Punishing Universities and Research Programs

The universities themselves have also been directly targeted by the Trump administration.  The administration has accused Columbia University, Harvard University, and over 50 other accredited universities of not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus.  While support for Jewish students and their safety is an admiral goal, again, this is not the true agenda of the Trump administration.  As Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street (a Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy group) called it, the Trump administration’s targeting of higher education is part of, “an all-out assault on the norms of our democracy and against the very existence of critical institutions, programs and services across all sectors of our society.”  In justifying its actions as protecting Jewish students, the Trump administration is abusing the very real fears of Jewish Americans about rising antisemitism.  Ben-Ami continued, “it is so painful to see the very real fears of Jewish Americans about rising antisemitism being abused by the Trump Administration to advance a nefarious agenda that undercuts key pillars of the Jewish experience – from civil rights to immigration and higher education.”^{[203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212]}

The Trump administration has bastardized and repurposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the false premise of protecting Jews from antisemitism in order to serve the opposite purpose for which it was intended: to twist higher institutions of learning into tools of propaganda that will further solidify a false right-wing national narrative.  It has trampled over the First Amendment rights of not only students but the universities they attend.  Trump has cut federal funds from universities that fail to comply with a list of demands he’s made.  The cuts have threatened not only the universities and the education of their students, but a wide plethora of invaluable research programs that span various fields including crucial life-saving medical research.^[213]

The damage to America these cuts alone are causing is truly massive.  These cuts are targeted funding cuts that are in addition to the broader cuts from DOGE as discussed previously in this series.  Imagine a world where the genome project, funded for over 13 years at a cost of around $3 billion, had never been undertaken.  This project unraveled the genetic sequence of humans, enabling us to study human genetics.  Being a federally funded program for the benefit of all, the results were freely dispersed to the broader scientific community.  How much humanity has learned in order to identify and treat various forms of cancer and other genetic diseases and conditions is unimaginable.  This is but one example of how profound the funding cuts Trump has imposed will cost us in human health, lifespan, knowledge, and understanding in various fields from medicine to the sciences to historical studies not only in our immediate future, but for generations to come.^[214]

As for the Trump administration’s demands, they are strikingly Orwellian.  They’ve called for the firing of university leaders they do not like, and the hiring of Trump loyalists in their place.  They’ve demanded changes to student discipline standards and other polices in order to punish students who speak out in ways the administration does not like, illegally suppressing their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.  The administration has banned foreign students from attending universities that do not comply with their authoritarian demands.  It’s also required the abandonment of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.  Apparently, they want to return to the days of unfairly granting straight white males an advantage in being accepted and completing university studies.  By stripping the country of a great pool of potential, highly qualified university students, the nation will suffer greatly for decades to come.^{[215][216][217]}

Universities must comply with very high standards of quality education to be accredited.  Critical thinking skills are taught to students so they learn to intelligently think for themselves.  Fact-based high quality information sources are relied upon.  Students thereby learn accurately about the subjects they study.  We learn best when we are open to where the evidence leads, and when we can adjust our perspectives to fit reality.  This enables the best and brightest to not merely enjoy successful and fulfilling careers, but maximizes their hard work’s efficacy and benefits to the world.

The Trump administration appears intent on rewriting and whitewashing history and corrupting the sciences to fit their false narratives, or their propaganda.  Rather than critically thinking about problems based on the facts and evidence, they want universities to enforce the administration’s desired biases and prejudices to govern what is “learned,” to dictate false narratives about reality and the world to the students.

It should be obvious that this would devastate humanity’s capacity for progress and darken the world.  For instance, a vast body of research has been conducted by climate scientists over several decades.  Over 99% of the scientific community agrees with the evidence-based conclusion that humanity is adversely affecting the Earth’s climate.  That is to say: nearly everyone in the world with the intellectual capacity to rigorously study the sciences, earning doctorate degrees and spending decades of their lives intimately and thoroughly studying the various facets and totality of climate science has independently come to the same conclusion that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon that will only get worse unless we correct course in certain ways.  Were the president’s ignorant politics to now interfere with scientific research, the efficacy of scientific work would be greatly and irredeemably harmed… if indeed it would still be considered “scientific.”  It is nothing short of the abandonment of scientific principles and progress, rendering humanity more prone to ignorant beliefs and their very dire consequences.  Efforts to identify and treat diseases and conditions would be stalled.  We’d miss out on developing new technologies that would greatly benefit us, as uncountably many prior examples have already done: hearing aids, cell phones, air travel, the Internet, etc..  Most disconcerting of all, we would fail to prevent human causes of adverse climate change, thus dooming current and especially future generations to live harsher, more painful, and shorter lives in a more dangerous and disaster-ridden world as a result.  To name a few tragic consequences of damaging the institutions of higher learning.

Currently, the administration’s authoritarian maneuvers are already having a strong chilling effect on faculty members and students alike.  Just as with the students, a number of professors who’ve committed no crimes have been arrested and jailed without due process.  Among U.S. born scientists recently surveyed, a whopping 75% have expressed serious consideration for moving to another country in light of the Trump administration’s attacks on universities and on research more broadly.  They are seeing where this administration is going, and they are seriously considering jumping ship and going where their work and lives can persist without an ignorant administration crushing their efforts and making life difficult.  Many of them are actively looking for jobs in Canada or in Europe.  Federal funding has dried up, killing not only so much potential scientific progress from now happening, but murdering the great advantage America has enjoyed in world scientific leadership since the end of World War II.  For nearly the last century, immigrants coming to America to escape their harsh government actions to suppress their work have made America the most advanced scientific nation in the world.  And now, it is being undone by the Trump administration in just 100 days.^{[218][219][220][221][222][223]}

His Motive

We can easily discern by fact-based observation that Donald Trump was motivated by perhaps three goals when he ran for office the second time.  First, he wanted to avoid going to jail for his many crimes.  The court cases were piling up, and he was beginning to face real consequences for his criminal actions, perhaps facing real consequences for the first time in his highly privileged life of inherited wealth and con artistry.  In what was perhaps the most egregious miscarriage of justice in American history, being elected president wiped the slate clean for him.

Second, he has a strong desire for vengeance for his perceived enemies.  As we have seen, he hit the ground running from day one to achieve the aims of punishing those he hates and rewarding those who proved their fealty to him.  He persecuted the FBI agents and DOJ staffers who worked on his cases, and corrupted these preeminent law and order agencies into his autocratic weapons, targeting all who would threaten his power.  He persecuted the law firms that either worked cases against him or who worked for his perceived enemies.  He bullied and threatened judges and their families when they did their jobs to check his abuses of power and blocked many of his illegal orders with their own constitutional authority.  He devastated the lives of students and their families for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment rights, and he damaged universities and their research for allowing students to exercise those rights.

And last but not least, Trump wanted power.  Autocratic, dictatorial power.  And he is on the path towards attaining more and more of it, and in the United States of all places: the birthplace of republican liberty.

…

Donald Trump is a criminal delinquent.  He lies frequently, with great confidence and no shame.  He has no scruples, no moral compass.  What he does have is a love of himself, a love of fealty to himself, and a dangerous penchant for authoritarian power.  And he has surrounded himself with ambitious and loyal sycophants who have proven track records of being very willing to do his bidding, regardless of the law or the Constitution.

How Did We Get to This Point?

Donald Trump could not achieve his nefarious goals alone.  He had a lot of help.  And not just from the executive branch as we’ve discussed in this article.

First, the election results and polls tell us that about a third of the country has believed Trump’s lies enough to vote for him over anyone else in 2024.  Therein lies the first and foremost clue to the underlying cause of America’s slide towards authoritarianism: too many Americans are susceptible to lies.

The Founders had originally designed the Constitution, and the framework for modern American government with it, to require an appointed college of electors to vote for president.  Eligible voters did not directly vote for the president, but would vote for the electors instead.  The electors then, in turn, voted for the president.  While this remains the case today, state laws have made presidential elections appear more direct and democratic by requiring state electors to, more or less, vote in accord with their own state’s popular vote counts.  But the original intent behind the electoral college design was to prohibit the average person from directly voting for president.  This was done by design because, frankly, the Founders did not believe the average person was capable of responsibly voting.  The pool of electors was chosen based on such qualities as their quality and level of education, their proven capacity to be rational and reasonable, their capacity for ponderous deliberation and a lack of quick and regrettable impulsiveness, and an openness of mind to consider all sides of each issue equanimously, capable of accounting for their own biases or preconceived notions.  With the more democratic changes to how we vote for president since, we have failed to account for what the Founders knew too well.  Instead of encouraging everyone to simply get out and vote, perhaps we should have focused even more on teaching all citizens from grade school on the vital skills of critical thinking, information literacy, reasoning, and civics?  To regard voting, not as an entitlement to be taken for granted and exercised willy nilly, but as a responsibility to be taken most seriously?

But could Donald Trump, a crass delinquent with con artist skills, alone fool so many people?  Not without help.  The seeds of the modern Republican party’s devolution towards fascism can be traced back some decades.  But as the tides shifted in Trump’s favor in the 2016 presidential campaign’s Republican primary, a major realignment then took place to more radically transform the party into something truly different than what it was before.  Political party realignments are not new in American history.  Parties have realigned several times over the country’s history.  The Democratic and Republican parties of today bear no resemblance to the Democratic and Republican parties of the Civil War era.  Their respective concerns and principles were quite different and, to a fair extent, reversed from their modern counterparts.  President Abraham Lincoln was America’s first Republican president, but the Republican party of his time was a far cry from what it is today, and as well what it was even half a century ago.  But for the first time in our nation’s history, a major political party has now embraced authoritarianism.  In spite of the noble but futile efforts of a handful of Republicans to bring their party back to its senses, the party of Reagan and the Bushes is dead.  A collective of white nationalists, fascists, evangelical theocrats, political cultists, cynical opportunists, sycophants, and a number of clueless people still vote Republican because they’ve failed to notice the party has realigned, have all now replaced it.

Seeing their own power on the line, Republicans in Congress have abandoned the party’s principles as well.  Republican “principles” are now but meaningless words spoken at times to persist the lie that they have not changed.  Some once had real principles, but are spineless in the face of being primaried by Trump for showing a lack of sufficient loyalty to him (as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do, and done).  Others are true believers in white nationalism, fascism, and/or oppressive Christian theocracy that motivates the Republican base and many Republicans now in government.  They’ve pledged fealty to one man, the tyrant king wannabe that is Donald Trump.

Right wing media organizations have similarly found that, either there’s a lot of money in the business of catering to and supporting the lies of Trump for their believing viewers and listeners, or they are full on believers in fascist and theocratic-leaning ideologies.  Right wing media has, in effect, become a highly effective propaganda machine to rival that of Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s propaganda minister under Adolf Hitler.  Right wing media has indeed “fascinated the fools” with “emotional excitement,” while the Trump administration has begun to “muzzle the intelligent,” as Bertrand Russell once said of the steps taken to devolve a free nation into fascism.

In the next and final article in this series, we will explore the dictatorial collaboration of Republicans more broadly: in Congress, and in right wing media, who have collectively defended, supported, and enabled Trump to win reelection in 2024.

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25. Ibid.

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34. Dreisbach, “A Jan. 6 rioter convicted of…”

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36. Brian, “America Is Becoming a Dictatorship… Part II: Loyalizing…”

37. Ibid.

38. Beitsch, “Trump signs order on government ‘weaponization’.”

39. Sarah N. Lynch, “U.S. Justice Dept. names war crimes expert as special counsel for Trump probes,” Reuters, Nov. 20, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-department-appoints-special-prosecutor-trump-probes-2022-11-18/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

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41. Sarah N. Lynch, “‘Fearless’ Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives in Washington to lead Trump probes,” Reuters, June 1, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fearless-special-counsel-jack-smith-arrives-washington-lead-trump-probes-2023-01-04/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

42. Lynch, “U.S. Justice Dept. names war crimes expert…”

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44. Lynch, “U.S. Justice Dept. names war crimes expert…”

45. Lynch, “Who is Special Counsel Jack Smith…”

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48. Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward, “Trump administration fires team of lawyers who prosecuted him, official says,” Reuters, Jan. 27, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-appointed-prosecutor-opens-internal-review-justice-depts-jan-6-cases-wsj-2025-01-27/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

49. Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer, “Trump Justice Department says it has fired employees involved in prosecutions of the president,” Associated Press, Jan. 28, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-special-counsel-trump-046ce32dbad712e72e500c32ecc20f2f (accessed June 23, 2025).

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53. Jasper Ward, “Trump says he has instructed DOJ to terminate all remaining Biden-era US attorneys,” Reuters, Feb. 18, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-has-instructed-doj-terminate-all-remaining-biden-era-us-attorneys-2025-02-18/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

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57. Carrie Johnson, “Justice Department changes rattle current and former agency veterans,” National Public Radio, Jan. 31, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5276871/justice-department-fbi-upheaval (accessed June 23, 2025).

58. Johnson, “Justice Department changes rattle current and former…”

59. Lynch, “FBI to transfer 1,500 staff out of Washington…”

60. Tom Winter, “Agents say mass firings could dangerously weaken FBI in three ways,” NBC News, Fe. 5, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/agents-say-mass-firings-dangerously-weaken-fbi-three-ways-rcna190915 (accessed June 23, 2025).

61. Lynch and Goudsward, “Trump’s Justice Department launches sweeping cuts…”

62. Winter, “Agents say mass firings could dangerously weaken…”

63. Ibid.

64. Ana Faguy, “Who is Kash Patel? Trump’s new FBI director vows to shake up the agency,” BBC, Feb. 20, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rqpp52j5vo (accessed June 23, 2025).

65. Alison Durkee, “Senate Confirms Kash Patel With 2 Republicans Opposing—What To Know About Trump’s New FBI Director,” Forbes, Feb. 20, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/20/senate-confirms-kash-patel-with-2-republicans-opposing-what-to-know-about-trumps-new-fbi-director/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

66. Zach Everson, “Trump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate On New Song Called ‘Justice For All’,” Forbes, Mar. 2, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2023/03/02/trump-and-jan-6-prisoners-collaborate-on-new-song-called-justice-for-all/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

67. Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, and Matt Brown, “Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists he has no ‘enemies list’ and won’t seek retribution,” Associated Press, Jan. 30, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/trump-fbi-patel-senate-f3465219e265df1598e15da3ad0e8a07 (accessed June 23, 2025).

68. Everson, “Trump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate…”

69. Ryan Lucas, “FBI Director Patel, a longtime bureau critic, begins to put his stamp on the agency,” National Public Radio, June 5, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/06/05/g-s1-70449/fbi-kash-patel (accessed June 23, 2025).

70. Tom Dreisbach and Nick McMillan, “New deputy FBI director Dan Bongino previously called for imprisoning Democrats,” National Public Radio, Mar. 3, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5308020/dan-bongino-trump-fbi-director-conspiracies-podcast (accessed June 23, 2025).

71. Everson, “Trump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate…”

72. Lucas, “FBI Director Patel, a longtime bureau critic…”

73. Robert Longley, “Understanding Civil Service: Its Definition, History, and Role,” ThoughtCo, Apr. 30, 2025, https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-civil-service-definition-and-examples-7069012 (accessed June 23, 2025).

74. Michael Lewis, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, March 2025).

75. Timothy Noah, “The Who’s Who on Kash Patel’s Crazy Enemies List,” The New Republic, Dec. 3, 2024, https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemies-list (accessed June 23, 2025).

76. Durkee, “Senate Confirms Kash Patel With…”

77. Noah, “The Who’s Who on Kash Patel’s…”

78. Durkee, “Senate Confirms Kash Patel With…”

79. Luke Barr, “Reagan FBI director urges caution against Gabbard, Patel,” ABC News, Dec. 28, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/reagan-fbi-director-urges-caution-gabbard-patel/story?id=117166000 (accessed June 23, 2025).

80. Everson, “Trump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate…”

81. Tucker, Richer, and Brown, “Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists…”

82. Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch, “Exclusive: FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say,” Reuters, Mar. 21, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-scales-back-staffing-tracking-domestic-terrorism-probes-sources-say-2025-03-21/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

83. Seth G. Jones, Catrina Doxsee, James Suber, and Grace Hwang, “The War Comes Home: The Evolution of Domestic Terrorism in the United States,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Oct. 22, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/war-comes-home-evolution-domestic-terrorism-united-states (accessed June 23, 2025).

84. Everson, “Trump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate…”

85. Tucker, Richer, and Brown, “Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists…”

86. Lucas, “FBI Director Patel, a longtime bureau critic…”

87. Sarah N. Lynch, “Trump attorney general nominee Pam Bondi clears Senate panel,” Reuters, Jan. 29, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-attorney-general-nominee-pam-bondi-clears-senate-panel-2025-01-29/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

88. David Thomas and Mike Scarcella, “Law and lobbying disclosures show earnings for Pam Bondi, RFK and top firms,” Reuters, Jan. 23, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/law-lobbying-disclosures-show-earnings-pam-bondi-rfk-top-firms-2025-01-23/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

89. Cheyanne M. Daniels, “NAACP Legal Defense Fund report finds Trump AG pick Pam Bondi ‘undermined’ voting rights,” The Hill, Jan. 16, 2025, https://thehill.com/homenews/5089582-naacp-report-trump-doj-pam-bondi/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

90. Michael Kang, “The Post-Trump Rightward Lurch in Election Law,” Symposium – 2022 – Safeguarding the Fundamental Right to Vote, Stanford Law Review, vol. 74, April 2022, https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/the-post-trump-rightward-lurch-in-election-law/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

91. Hansi Lo Wang, “Trump officials interfered with the 2020 census beyond cutting it short, email shows,” National Public Radio, Jan. 15, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1073338121/2020-census-interference-trump (accessed June 23, 2025).

92. Hansi Lo Wang, “Trump Appointees Join Census Bureau; Democrats Concerned Over Partisan ‘Games’,” National Public Radio, June 23, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/23/882433973/trump-appointees-join-census-bureau-democrats-concerned-over-partisan-games (accessed June 23, 2025).

93. Hansi Lo Wang, “Census Could Look ‘Manipulated’ If Cut Short By Trump Officials, Bureau Warned,” National Public Radio, Sept. 20, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914692254/census-could-look-manipulated-if-cut-short-by-trump-officials-bureau-warned (accessed June 23, 2025).

94. Hansi Lo Wang, “Running Out Of Time, Census Scales Back A Critical Step: Checking Its Own Work,” National Public Radio, Aug. 29, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/08/29/905846761/the-census-scales-back-a-critical-step-checking-its-own-work (accessed June 23, 2025).

95. Hansi Lo Wang, “Mail Delays Could Hurt The Census, Too,” National Public Radio, Aug. 20, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/902774632/mail-delays-could-hurt-the-census-too (accessed June 23, 2025).

96. Hansi Lo Wang, “Trump’s Census Director To Quit After Trying To Rush Out ‘Indefensible’ Report,” National Public Radio, Jan. 18, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/01/18/957302276/trumps-census-director-to-quit-after-trying-to-rush-out-indefensible-report (accessed June 23, 2025).

97. Ben Nadler, “Georgia GOP governor candidate sued over voter registrations,” Associated Press, Oct. 12, 2018, https://apnews.com/gubernatorial-elections-general-news-0674d8683bbe4c38b28301645ab48b8f (accessed June 23, 2025).

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99. Dan MacGuill, “Which States Ban Giving Food and Water to Voters at Polling Places?,” Snopes, Apr. 6, 2021, https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/06/food-water-ban-polling-places/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

100. Daniels, “NAACP Legal Defense Fund report finds…”

101. Lynch, “Trump attorney general nominee Pam Bondi…”

102. Daniels, “NAACP Legal Defense Fund report finds…”

103. Ibid.

104. Ibid.

105. Lynch, “Trump attorney general nominee Pam Bondi…”

106. Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer, “Trump Justice Department says it has fired employees involved in prosecutions of the president,” Associated Press, Jan. 28, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-special-counsel-trump-046ce32dbad712e72e500c32ecc20f2f (accessed June 23, 2025).

107. Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward, “Trump’s Justice Department launches sweeping cuts targeting Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents,” Reuters, Jan. 31, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-launches-wide-ranging-round-cuts-sources-say-2025-01-31/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

108. Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward, “Trump administration fires team of lawyers who prosecuted him, official says,” Reuters, Jan. 27, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-appointed-prosecutor-opens-internal-review-justice-depts-jan-6-cases-wsj-2025-01-27/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

109. Ryan Lucas, “New attorney general moves to align Justice Department with Trump’s priorities,” National Public Radio, Feb. 5, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/02/05/g-s1-46698/attorney-general-memos-weaponization-trump (accessed June 23, 2025).

110. Brian, “Donald Trump Would Be a Dictator…” Please refer to this article for more details on Trump’s federal cases and for direct sources.

111. Ibid.

112. Ibid.

113. Meg Kinnard, “With Trump newly indicted, here’s what to know about the documents case and what’s next,” Associated Press, July 28, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-new-indictment-classified-documents-81b982b8195dcfb85b7ae8789f108b0b (accessed June 23, 2025).

114. Brian, “Donald Trump Would Be a Dictator…”

115. Jacqueline Thomsen, “Bondi’s Attorney Advocacy Memo Raises Independence Concerns,” Bloomberg, Feb. 7, 2025, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/bondi-raises-independence-concerns-with-attorney-advocacy-memo (accessed June 23, 2025).

116. Jasper Ward, “Trump says he has instructed DOJ to terminate all remaining Biden-era US attorneys,” Reuters, Feb. 19, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-has-instructed-doj-terminate-all-remaining-biden-era-us-attorneys-2025-02-18/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

117. Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch , “Trump’s Justice Department hits the brakes on anti-corruption enforcement,” Reuters, Feb. 18, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-justice-department-hits-brakes-anti-corruption-enforcement-2025-02-12/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

118. Sarah N. Lynch and John Kruzel, “Trump Justice Department fires head of organized crime drug task force,” Reuters, Mar. 10, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-justice-department-fires-head-organized-crime-drug-task-force-2025-03-08/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

119. Mike Scarcella, “Trump’s orders targeting law firms raise constitutional concerns, experts say,” Reuters, Mar. 10, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-orders-targeting-law-firms-raise-constitutional-concerns-experts-say-2025-03-08/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

120. Peter Eisler and Sarah N. Lynch, “US cancels hundreds of grants for police, crime victims, Justice Dept documents show,” Reuters, Apr. 23, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-department-cancels-hundreds-grants-police-crime-victims-2025-04-23/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

121. Sarah N. Lynch and Peter Eisler, “Exclusive: US Justice Dept grant cuts valued at $811 million, people and records say,” Reuters, Apr. 24, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-grant-cuts-valued-811-million-people-familiar-say-2025-04-24/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

122. Martin Kaste, “Justice Department cuts to public safety grants leave police and nonprofits scrambling,” National Public Radio, May 24, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/05/24/nx-s1-5392378/justice-department-cuts-to-public-safety-grants-leave-police-and-nonprofits-scrambling (accessed June 23, 2025).

123. Scott MacFarlane, “U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is pressed to spare civil rights-era “peacemakers” program from closure,” CBS News, May 7, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/community-relations-service-pam-bondi-house-democrats/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

124. U.S. Constitution, 8^th amendment.

125. Bill Chappell, “Would it be legal for Trump to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s jails?,” National Public Radio, Feb. 5, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/02/05/nx-s1-5287670/trump-el-salvador-americans-prison (accessed June 23, 2025).

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135. U.S. Constitution, 5^th amendment.

136. Michael Kunzelman, Eric Tucker, and Alanna Durkin Richer, “Trump officials’ defiance over Abrego Garcia’s deportation is ‘shocking,’ appeals court says,” Associated Press, Apr. 17, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/abrego-garcia-trump-maryland-el-salvador-2090f0dd508bbc3d2f60845842af27b4 (accessed June 23, 2025).

137. Sara Dorn, “The Conspiracy Behind Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Tattoos Explained — After Trump Insists Doctored ‘MS-13’ Ink Is Real,” Forbes, Apr. 30, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/04/30/the-conspiracy-behind-kilmar-abrego-garcias-tattoos-explained-after-trump-insists-doctored-ms-13-ink-is-real/ (accessed June 23, 2025).

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144. U.S. Constitution, 1^st amendment.

145. U.S. Constitution, 4^th amendment.

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